Murder Feels Crazy

by Bill Alive

  I ran toward her.

  The guard shouted and tried to lunge after the furry, but those sneakers had raced outside the instant the deed was done.

  I reached Ceci, with Mark a breath behind me. He’d gone pale and he looked stricken with guilt.

  “Ceci!” I said. “Are you okay?”

  But her face was clenched and grim.

  Chapter 3

  The next morning, I faced an even greater shock.

  I emerged from my bedroom (hurrying, I admit, because the bare concrete floor gets chilly in the fall, and only the main room has a carpet) to find Mark scurrying around everywhere like a manic squirrel… cleaning.

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t actually a shock. You try writing these chapter openings.

  But still. You know what our cabin is like. It’s no architectural feat to begin with, being a semi-winterized hunting cabin at the top of a treacherous “neighborhood” mountain road and looking, as I’ve written elsewhere, like the kind of house a retired Wal-Mart greeter might buy his aunt, if he hated her guts.

  However, the aunt might at least put up some nice wind chimes. And she’d hang some pretty frilly curtains. And she probably wouldn’t smell like two dudes with no easy way to do their laundry.

  With us, the general feel is more like a college dorm room, if the room also had to fit a huge TV and a multiple-monitor workstation fit for a minor supervillain, plus a blizzard of books and console games, and a kitchen stove, and a wood stove (our sole source for heat). I reminded myself to ask Mark about getting firewood for that wood stove sometime soon (it being November).

  At first, I couldn’t tell what Mark was doing. Then I realized I was beholding a sight I never dreamed I’d see.

  “You cleared off the coffee table?” I gasped. “I didn’t know that surface was real wood!”

  Mark flushed. He looked embarrassed. Even… nervous?

  BAM BAM BAM. An imperious knock thundered on the front door.

  “It’s unlocked,” Mark called, with studied indifference.

  In stepped Gwen, in full cop regalia.

  Imagine a gorgeous Viking goddess getting trapped in our world and condemned to defeat the archenemies of humanity as a small-town police officer in rural Virginia.

  Gwen is maybe two-and-a-half times more intimidating.

  At least, she had been, back when I was in college and had met her as Ceci’s implausibly hot, badass, and overprotective older sister. (Back in college, Ceci had been the short, chubby, affectionate version of the Jensen prototype; these days, she had dropped the extra weight and gotten all buff.)

  Seeing Gwen now as she strode across our slightly rotting doorstep, I sensed a change in her as well. Was it just me? Was I finally getting used to this tall blonde Paladin of Justice and Doom?

  Or was it… her?

  She was not quite making eye contact with Mark. There was, in fact, a very strange vibe.

  They hadn’t seen each other since Saturday, at the wedding reception.

  Well, no, actually Mark and I had stayed at the hospital near Ceci last night until Gwen had arrived. But all she’d said then was, “We have to meet,” before rushing to talk to Ceci’s doctor.

  I hadn’t thought she’d meant now. With a pang, I realized I was rocking rumpled pajamas, and I reached to smooth my disaster of bedhead hair.

  Gwen smirked. “At ease, Pete. Good to see you without that crap in your hair for once.”

  My cheeks burned. So much for getting used to Gwen.

  “How’s Ceci?” Mark said.

  “Nothing broken, thank God,” Gwen said. “But her lower back’s still in a lot of pain. The doctors say it could hurt for weeks.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” Mark said.

  “Thanks.”

  Awkward pause. The three of us just stood there, like a bunch of junior high kids fidgeting at the bus stop on the first day of school. What was wrong with us?

  I felt like Mark was weirdly nervous, as if he was trying to work up to something. He looked fine, his square jaw carefully casual, but I just had this… feeling.

  A feeling I decided to ignore. As much as I love Mark being an empath, I have zero interest in opening any psychic portals myself. Sure, I used to dream of fantastic spiritual powers, back in my halcyon days of rosy innocence… say, a couple months ago. But now? Now that I’d seen the kinds of feelings that make an empath writhe? No thank you. I was clearly imagining things.

  “Can I get you anything?” Mark said, smooth as ever. “Coffee? Tea? Gross cheap beer?”

  “Depends,” Gwen said. “Only if you dumped your pantry after sheltering that cultist.”

  (Like I said, I’ve given up on protecting you from spoilers.)

  “I highly doubt Yvette did any tampering without permission,” Mark said, “but yes, you’ll be pleased to hear that we got plenty of money to replace the groceries. In fact, with Theodore out of the picture, my new client is working out great. For the moment, I have steady employment.”

  “Excellent,” Gwen said. “Perhaps you can put some money into eliminating the Odor of Man Cave.”

  Mark flinched.

  “Hey,” I said. “He just cleaned off the coffee table!”

  Mark glared at me, but Gwen’s eyes brightened, and a smile flicked her lips before she clamped it down. “Well done, Mr. Falcon. And I will have coffee, thank you.”

  With a distinct air of relief, Mark scuttled to the fridge. (He gets this pre-made iced coffee junk online.)

  “I’m glad to hear your income has stabilized,” Gwen added. “You’ll have plenty of time to help me track down this furry bastard.”

  A clatter of bottles crashed from the fridge.

  “What?” I blurted. “You want Mark to help you?”

  “Of course,” Gwen said, stone nonchalant, as if she’d been a Mark fan from day one instead of fighting us every step of the way. I mean, seriously, this woman has threatened us with jail if we wouldn’t stop investigating cases… and it didn’t make anything easier when Mark started to like her. “You were an eyewitness, Mr. Falcon,” she continued. “I assume you got a vibe?”

  “Excuse me?” Mark said. He’d been scooping the bottles he’d knocked back into the fridge, but now he let the door hang open and stared at her… like he wasn’t quite sure this was actually Gwen.

  It occurred to me that robots were getting more and more lifelike… oh crud, that better not have been Mark’s thought leaking my way…

  “Mr. Falcon,” Gwen said. “Believe me, I would much rather you had turned out to be delusional.”

  “Um… thanks?” Mark said.

  “You’re welcome. But at this point, further skepticism would be a waste of time and resources. You have a skill. We should put it to good use.”

  “Oh… my… gosh,” I said. I may have been panting slightly, and possibly wringing my hands like a tween at her first Justin Bieber concert. (Wait, is Bieber still a thing?) “You… you believe!” I gasped at Gwen. I turned to Mark. “Dude, she believes!”

  “I’m standing right here,” he said.

  “You believe!” I gushed back at Gwen. “Wow! I can’t believe this is really happening! Hey, can he still mind text you? Like at that reception, were you two—”

  Gwen cleared her throat. “What I ‘believe’, Pete, is in using the tools at hand. Now, Mr. Falcon, the man or woman who assaulted Ceci was wearing that ridiculous disguise and fled without speaking. However, if you sensed any kind of impression we could use to identify—”

  “Sorry,” Mark said. He closed the fridge door and fiddled with the coffee bottle. “I was shielding.”

  Gwen frowned. “Shielding?”

  “It’s a way of blocking his empathy,” I said. “One time it saved his life.”

  Slowly Gwen marched toward Mark at the fridge, her jaw set and her eyes grim. “You were shielding when some person unknown and in disguise was demanding opiates?”

  “I don’t believe this,” Mark said. He crossed his arms and face
d her, the incongruous coffee bottle shoving into the bulge of his bicep.

  Gwen crossed her arms too, leaning in two feet from his face. “You were there. You had an obligation.”

  “Because it was your sister?”

  Her eyes blazed. “No, because your community could be under attack from these so-called ‘furries’.”

  “Attack?” Mark said. “Sure, the animal suits might be eccentric, but—”

  “Try heroin, Mr. Falcon.”

  Mark frowned a poker face, but he looked grave.

  “You mean they’re heroin dealers?” I put in, still awkwardly standing back by the couch. “Just because that one panda wanted meds? That makes no sense. Remember those other furries? They were protesting opiates. You were there, Gwen, we were walking to the reception.”

  “That proves nothing,” Gwen said. “They probably thought they were being clever. We now have at least two so-called ‘furries’ definitely involved with opiates. The perp who assaulted Ceci… and the veterinarian who overdosed, Roxanne.”

  “Roxanne?” I said. “She wasn’t a furry.”

  “Yes, she was,” Gwen said. “Back Mosby has a local furry group, and we have ascertained that she was a member. She was also the first heroin overdose we’ve had in Back Mosby since the nineties.”

  I had trouble wrapping my mind around Roxanne being a furry. Roxanne had struck me as both a committed veterinarian and an overly made-up redhead in her forties who was obsessed with her ex-husband (and ready to shoot his new wife). Not my idea of the typical furry profile.

  On the other hand, I didn’t actually know anything about the “typical” furry.

  Plus, Roxanne had been a veterinarian. Of all the professions that might want to dress up as a stuffed animal, maybe it made sense?

  Not that any of this really made sense.

  Mark said, “If Roxanne was a furry, that means those other furries knew her. So they were probably protesting that clinic because their friend died. She went there for opiate painkillers and she got hooked on opiate heroin.”

  Gwen stiffened (more). “I assure you, Mr. Falcon, we have kept a close eye on that clinic since the owner, Dr. Milton Paul, first applied for a permit. At first, we had our suspicions, but Dr. Paul is thoroughly legitimate. He observes all the new regulations on tracking his prescriptions, and his prescription rates for each patient are well within the guidelines. This is not some West Virginia pharmacy where hordes of out-of-state dealers can pay cash to fill a stack of bogus ‘prescriptions’.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Mark said, not quite hiding his skepticism.

  “I mean it,” Gwen snapped. “I admit, I have reservations about these opiate meds myself. But as long as they’re legal, if we’re going to have them, a man like Dr. Paul is our best hope.”

  “If you say so,” Mark said.

  “I do. It’s far more likely that this so-called ‘furry’ group is a pathetic front for a new ring of heroin users… if not dealers.”

  Mark sighed. “That really doesn’t sound right.”

  “Then come and prove me wrong. They post their meetings online, and they’ve announced a meeting for tonight. Seven o’clock at GORP Gourmet.”

  “Online?” Mark said. “You used the Internet?”

  Gwen narrowed her eyes. “Are you coming or not?”

  Mark shrugged.

  This seemed to trigger Gwen into a mysterious high alert. She eyed him, and her nostrils flared. “What does that mean?” she said.

  Mark started to study the coffee bottle with intense interest. Even across the room, I could see sweat bead on his brow.

  “Mr. Falcon?”

  Mark cleared his throat. Still scrutinizing the fascinating Nutrition Facts, he said, “You know, that was really fun the other night. That reception.”

  Gwen nearly turned to stone.

  The skin of her face blanched alabaster white. She stared, frozen, with eyes wide, lips parted, but with no breath to voice her shock.

  I could barely breathe myself.

  “We should do it again,” Mark said, grinding out each word. “Go dancing. Like after this GORP thing.”

  “On a Tuesday?” I blurted.

  (Okay, apparently I always find the breath to spurt something dumb. Thanks a bunch, involuntary respiratory system. Any time you want to reroute some extra blood into my prefrontal cortex, I am totally down. I don’t know why I have to be so Tact Impaired all the time when I’m so scintillating and literary at the keyboard. Maybe real life is an overstimulant.)

  Anyway, my intrusion snapped Standing Beauty out of her spell.

  “Dancing?” she demanded. “We’re facing a possible heroin invasion right here in Back Mosby, and all you can think about is dancing?”

  “Come on, Gwen,” Mark said, looking right at her now, his voice back to its laconic norm. The hard part was past. “Last week I almost died. I thought I’d take a breather.”

  Gwen grimaced. “Of course you did.” She turned and strode for the door.

  “Hey, hey! Relax, I’ll do it!” Mark said. He hustled after her, holding out the coffee as a peace offering. “GORP’s at seven?”

  She stopped and grudged him a look. “I’ll pick you up at quarter till.”

  “Really?” Mark said. “Isn’t that a bit forward?” His eyes twinkled.

  Gwen’s did not. “Would you rather I write you a ticket for that damn muffler you won’t fix?”

  Mark tamped his smirk into a straight line. “No ma’am.”

  He held out the coffee.

  She stormed out and slammed the door.

  Silence.

  Mark studied the rejected bottle with a bemused air.

  I said, “You did not just ask her out.”

  Slowly, Mark smiled.

  Chapter 4

  Gwen might be an impassioned defender of law, order, and full-time employment, but she can sure disrupt a guy’s morning on a workday.

  Not that I noticed this much. I was too busy geeking out about Mark finally asking out Gwen.

  Still, it must be said that after missing so much work (again) over our last case, I was officially looking forward to buckling down and getting some serious hours in before the holidays.

  For one thing, we’re a gift store, and with Thanksgiving and Black Friday only a few weeks away, we were hurtling headlong into the holiday frenzy. My awesome boss Vivian was going to need me to start, you know, showing up; she’d dropped several unmistakable “hints” with a Southern smile and a steely glint.

  For another thing, the rent wasn’t going to pay itself.

  I’d been hoping that Murder Feels Awful and Murder Feels Bad would set the world’s Kindles on, um, fire (sorry)… but they still seemed to be in the Early Discovery phase. Meaning I would have to run ads or something. Which would also take money.

  Although we did already have a small core of rocking early fans. You guys are awesome.

  Just when I think I can’t pull another all-nighter and pound out the next draft, you send an excited email that makes it all worthwhile. Thank you.

  Of course, everyone seems to think this all really IS just some fiction series, and they’re always writing to that Bill Alive “author” guy I made up.

  But whatever. It’s cool. I still feel the love.

  (Stupid libel laws.)

  What I’m really trying to say here is, by the time Gwen left, I was late for work.

  Then Mark offered to drive me in. Which was weird. He works at home, at Supervillian Station.

  When we got there, he walked in with me to the store. This was even weirder.

  I work at Valley Visions, the best (and only) New Age gift store in this part of the Shenandoah Valley. In general, Mark’s take on the place ranges from caustic skepticism to jokes about optometrists.

  His relationship with Vivian is more nuanced. On the one hand, she’s a sweet, loving, super spiritual mentor type, and she taught him to shield. On the other hand, she always hits on him. And she’s like, s
ixty.

  Yes, Vivian has many fantastic qualities, not excluding an Attractiveness Quotient which is, perhaps, I will tentatively venture, unusually high for a person of her years. Mark still doesn’t tend to drop by.

  But here he was, and I should have been on high alert, trying to guess what the heck Mark was doing in here.

  Nope. I just kept congratulating him on finally taking the plunge.

  “I did ask her to the wedding,” Mark muttered as we walked in, presumably lowering his voice because he spotted Vivian behind the counter. She was helping some jovial beefy dude who was wearing a white work shirt as he examined a tray of crystals. The dude struck me as familiar, but I couldn’t place him from his broad back.

  Opening the door had, of course, knocked down the ward, and for once I didn’t complain as I hooked the crumbling plant back over the door and brushed my hands free of the dried bits it had shed. I really don’t get the ward.

  It occurred to me that the ward made me think of how my mom still has dried dead flowers from her wedding, hanging on a hook in her closet. My dad’s never taken the hint to buy her some new flowers.

  I pulled myself back into happy thoughts. “I know you asked Gwen to the wedding,” I said, “but that was just as friends.”

  Vivian heard me. She gave me a curt nod, then smiled at Mark, tossed her blonded gray hair, and winked.

  Mark favored her with a friendly smile… but he jabbed me with his elbow.

  Fine. I dropped my voice. “Dancing is totally different.”

  “Also,” Mark muttered, “she said no.”

  “Not technically!” I said. “She didn’t say either way! And she still wanted your help as a detective. She actually asked you to take this case!”

  At the counter, the dude snapped his head our way, like a squirrel spotting a nut. “Detective?” he said. “Case?”

  Mark made a low, confidential groan.

  The dude scrutinized us across the room. His intensity startled me. I was surprised that his face could even look intense, because although his broad body had some obvious strength, his face verged on the chubby, which gave him that innocent “baby face” look. If you didn’t notice that his hair was graying, and if the lighting was fairly poor, you might take him at a glance for a college guy, even though he was moderately old, maybe forty-five.