Murder Feels Crazy

by Bill Alive

  I buckled in and waited for Mark to rev up Thunder, trying to distract myself by shoving around the empty plastic coffee bottles at my feet. Honestly, the bottles had creeped me out the first time I’d gotten in the car, but now that Mark was on this cleaning bender, I realized I might miss having my own little personal ball crawl. Maybe we were both growing up too fast.

  Then I realized that Mark was sitting there in the driver’s seat, squinting at me. Not even starting the car.

  “What?” I said. “What is it?”

  “Nothing. Did you call Ceci yet about our bowling thing?”

  What did that have to do with anything? “I thought you said that might not happen.”

  “It’s fine. Did you?”

  “You didn’t even tell me when you’re doing it. And isn’t Ceci still in the hospital?”

  “Gwen said next Saturday. That’s a week and a half from now, Ceci should be up and about by then.” He frowned. “You are asking Ceci, right?”

  “What do you mean asking? We’re just friends,” I said.

  “So what’s the big deal?”

  “It’s not a big deal!”

  “So why don’t you call her?”

  Oh, I don’t know, Mark, I thought, maybe it’s not my absolute first choice to catch her giggling with Dr. Handsome Success? Maybe they’ve already got plans that night for some fancy French dinner?

  And then I thought, why would that matter if you’re really just friends?

  “I’ll call her,” I said.

  “When?”

  “Fine, I’ll call her right now! Would you just start the car?”

  “It can wait a couple minutes. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the muffler can get loud.”

  With a grumble, I started prying the phone out of my pocket. Not an easy task when you’re crammed in a car. “I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal about this,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Maybe I want my third wheel to at least have a buddy.”

  “Hey, I know it’s not your first choice, but Gwen was pretty skittish—”

  I stopped, staring at my phone.

  “What?” he said.

  “My phone’s dead.”

  I was mildly shocked. I never let my phone die.

  And then an inner voice murmured, you never USED to… before you got that call from Mom…

  “Weird,” I said. “Oh well.”

  “No worries,” Mark said. “I’ve got a charger.”

  “What is your deal?” I snapped.

  “What’s your deal?” he said. With infuriating Mark calm, he fished out a wire from the ball crawl and plugged it into my phone. “You’ve been off ever since we saw Ceci the other night.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I don’t know what you’re not talking about. You still haven’t told me the whole awful truth about…” He raised his eyebrows in mock terror. “…the Incident.”

  I groaned. “You’re just not going to let this go.”

  “Nope.” He fired up the car and pulled away from the curb. “Remember, Pete. You’re the one who keeps pushing me to stick with this detective thing. You have, in fact, helped create this monster of relentless interrogation.”

  Despite myself, I smirked, and I sank back into the lumpy old seat. Maybe I would feel better if I got it all off my chest. Who knew, Mark might even dig up some scintillating snippet of big brotherly wisdom.

  Or not.

  Ugh. The Incident…

  Chapter 21

  Fine. I told Mark, I may as well tell you.

  So back at the wedding reception, as you know, Mark and Gwen had had this glorious splendiferous night of gleeful shenanigans.

  Okay, mainly it was Mark rocking crazy original dance moves around Gwen while she stood there shining, and doing her squawk laugh, and occasionally trying to clap. They were totally hitting on each other, and maybe not even realizing it. It was adorable.

  Ceci and I kept watching them and exchanging indulgent comments. Although we also took plenty of time to enjoy our ability to dance like normal humans.

  Afterward, as she drove me home, Ceci was all sweaty and sparkling and super happy. She kept saying how great it was to see Gwen enjoying herself, how she hadn’t seen Gwen so glad in years.

  At first I was riding high on the shared mudita bliss. But then… something in me shifted, like a summer breeze gone chill. I couldn’t explain it, even to myself. I just felt exposed to some nameless threat.

  Ceci noticed. “Pete?” she asked, eyeing me from the wheel. “What’s up?”

  I had no idea what to say. So, of course, I said something dumb. “I thought you hated Mark.”

  She laughed. “At first, he did seem like a major jerk. But deep down, he’s a sweetie.”

  “Mark?”

  “Besides…” she said, darting me a sly glance which lingered way too long for my comfort level, given she was driving, “I didn’t know he could dance.”

  “Are you serious?” I said. “That’s high on your list for Suitable Brother-In-Law?”

  “Whoa! Slow down there,” she said. “I don’t think anyone’s proposing anytime soon.”

  “I know,” I said. “But… don’t you think it might be… awkward?”

  “Awkward? How?” she said. She frowned. “We all had a fantastic night! Everyone was so comfortable.”

  “Really?” I said.

  She braked for a red light, and then she looked me full in the face, suddenly all serious. Even in the reddish glow of the stoplight, her eyes were wide and beautiful.

  I admit it, okay? I already did. I know you’ll read this, I’ve always said you have pretty eyes. Or at least always thought it.

  She looked away, up at the still-red light. Her bare shoulders gleamed smooth.

  “Comfortable is good, Pete,” she murmured.

  And then I was putting my arm around her. Her bare shoulders burned through my sleeve, right to the skin.

  She nestled into me. Her cheek lay serene on my shoulder, her wet curls kissed my cheek.

  My blood was pounding everywhere we touched. Waves of energy were crashing between us, mounting, soaring higher and higher, and beneath them all my mind was chanting a single word over and over, home…

  And then some stupid pickup truck thudded into the rear bumper.

  Thankfully, the airbags didn’t deploy. But the whole back end of her car had crinkled like—

  “Wait, that was it?” Mark interrupted. “You put your arm around her?”

  (I was telling him too, remember? As we drove over to Katrina’s. Although maybe not in those words exactly.)

  Mark was shaking his head. “You didn’t say you just put your arm around the woman.”

  “I didn’t say anything!” I snapped. “You’ve been trying to vibe it all!”

  “Dude, I’ve been trying not to vibe it all. You’ve been filling the house with a serious warm front of Pete Brooding Angst. And the house isn’t that big—”

  “Okay, okay!”

  “You’ve been moping around all stricken. I was afraid you got her pregnant.”

  I cringed. “Could you just not? Oh my gosh. The arm thing is just, it’s not something we do.”

  “You guys hug every ten minutes.”

  “That’s a hug, that’s totally different from a…”

  “Nestle?”

  “Yes! Except no! Apparently!”

  Mark eyed me. “You’d better figure this out,” he said, low and serious.

  Suddenly, I had a headache. I put a finger to my forehead, pressing the point of the pain. “I already did,” I mumbled.

  Mark scowled. “You’re not seriously worried about that idiot doctor?”

  “At least he knows he likes her!”

  “What?” he snapped, now really angry. “What the hell, Pete? Are you that oblivious? You didn’t get burned enough with Vanessa and that cult girl, now you’re going to go crush on yet another suspect—”

 
“There’s nothing with Rachel!”

  “No. There isn’t,” he said. “And Ceci’s the kind of person you make a life with.”

  I didn’t answer. I got hijacked by thoughts.

  Your father and I need to figure some things out.

  My parents’ wedding shot: an oversized frame over the fireplace, my dad grinning wide and my mom all pretty and thin, thin, thin.

  My dad, explaining: as we sit on the comfy couches in the basement TV room, the day after I find the special drawer, at age sixteen… he and my mom will always have a very special love, he says, but life’s too short for him to never see another young and beautiful woman. He says my mom understands.

  My mom, when I try to talk about it later: she says she feels the same about carbs.

  In my mom’s closet: the wedding flowers, dried to a crisp.

  Peter, please don’t make this any harder…

  …and at that particular lovely memory, I got enough awareness back to realize that Mark was glancing at me as he drove, grim and pained.

  I wilted. “Please tell me you didn’t vibe all that.”

  “I got enough,” he muttered. He sighed. “I’m sorry, Pete. Damn.”

  “I just don’t want to hurt anyone,” I said. “You know? Especially Ceci.”

  “Huh,” Mark said.

  “What do you mean, huh?” I snapped. “Is that some big revelation?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I never got why you acted like the crush has to last forever.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I said.

  He frowned. “How so?”

  “Come on! Gwen’s a freaking goddess!”

  Mark looked baffled.

  “Oh please,” I said. “Please don’t tell me you somehow haven’t noticed.”

  “Of course, she’s beautiful,” Mark said. “But so what? I’m an empath, remember? I walk past some random woman who thinks I’m hot every other week.”

  “I know!” I said.

  “So who cares?” he said. “That’s not the kind of thing you build a life on.”

  “I know, I know… not just that…”

  “Pete, if I were getting groceries and there were suddenly gunshots, all those hot chicks would scream and run for their lives. Their dudes too. But Gwen?”

  “She’d run toward it,” I said, dully. Somehow I felt scalded… ashamed that I’d never seen her this way. Or at least, not as her defining feature.

  We drove in silence.

  Well, except Thunder.

  I thought about Ceci, all the countless times she’d told me about her day, like it was the most natural thing in the world to clean up a stranger’s puke or read to some kid with leukemia. I can’t even watch an old episode of ER. She’s amazing.

  So why didn’t my treacherous body seem to care? If it was going be brain versus beauty rush, that was not a fight I wanted to bet anyone’s future on.

  “I can’t help how I feel,” I muttered.

  Mark scoffed.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “That is not a line you use on an empath.”

  “Wait… you mean I’m wrong? Like I have feelings I’m not even realizing?”

  “Forget it, Pete.”

  “Dude, you’ve got to tell me! What if I’m clueless?”

  “If?”

  “I’m serious!”

  “No. No shortcuts. I’m not crossing the streams.”

  “Okay, if that’s a Ghostbusters reference, the whole point of the movie is that they DO cross the streams—”

  “Drop it,” Mark said. “And keep it down. You might spook the termites.”

  I hadn’t even realized he’d parked. I looked out the window and yelped.

  Termites on Katrina’s house might have been an improvement.

  Chapter 22

  Decrepit. There’s your word for the day.

  Maybe you’ve heard it before, but try saying it out loud… deh-CREP-it. You can totally see some ancient skeleton zombie thing with a walker just CREP… CREP… CREPPING up to get you.

  Perfect word for this house.

  It might have been lovely once, like five hundred years ago. Back then, it could have shimmered out of a Ray Bradbury story, a big three-story haven with gabled windows and a wraparound porch to house three generations of extended family. Grandmas could have sat on the porch to share lemonade with the neighbors.

  Today… today, the chilly gray November morning wasn’t doing anyone any favors. But as we walked carefully up the rotting steps, I decided that those dingy white metal porch chairs couldn’t have held a human for decades. All those friendly neighbors were long dead.

  When Mark knocked, the peeling paint crackled off a few more flakes. We waited. Time congealed. The house seemed to suck us into its own private eddy of the space-time continuum, a festering pool of stillness and decay…

  It was a nice distraction from my own problems.

  Finally, we heard someone shuffling down a stairway. Given the shuffle and the spirit of the place, I braced myself to face a ghostly ancient.

  But the woman who met us wasn’t more than fifty. She’d lit up her graying hair with streaks of pink and green, and she wore a dark old rock band T-shirt over the yellowing saggy sleeves of a long underwear top. Also, she was wearing earbuds and moving a little weird, doing her own private dance to some eurobeat.

  I realized that if this was Katrina, she was Luther’s older sister, so she was probably even younger than she looked. Early forties? Late thirties? But her lipsticked mouth pursed above slopes of wrinkles like a desert plateau.

  “Oh, god,” she brayed. “More Mormons?”

  “No way,” I said hastily. “We’re just here about a murder.”

  Mark cleared his throat.

  “What?” she said. She plucked out an earbud. The bass was so loud I could hear the beat.

  Mark said, “It’s about your brother Luther.”

  She scowled.

  “And heroin,” Mark said.

  She straightened up and her nostrils flared, like a hound on the scent. “Shit, man,” she snapped. “Not out here.” She darted a look up and down the street of rundown houses, then nodded us in with a jerk.

  The dark parlor was crowded with mismatched, oppressive ancient furniture. At least two couches were covered in plastic, and a third could have used it. The long room stretched into a shadowy dining area with an enormous wooden table and towering cupboards stacked with china… the whole place felt like a refugee camp for orphaned antiques.

  Mildew lingered in all those crevices, and my nose prickled. Another pungent aroma was the pet store stench of birds. I didn’t see the cage anywhere, but their odor preceded them. Then, as Katrina sat heavily in an easy chair that swallowed her up, the birds squawked from some other room.

  “SHUT UP!” Katrina hollered, but the birds kept squawking. “Damn parakeets,” Katrina said. “My aunt babies those things like they’re family.”

  The comment made me notice how many family pictures crammed the gloomy walls. Her aunt had quite a collection, mostly in dusty black-and-white. The most recent they got were the sickly, orange-toned 1970s.

  Mark sat carefully on the edge of a plastic-covered couch and leaned forward. “So,” he said. “I heard Luther got pretty upset last night.”

  Katrina frowned. Her head still bobbed to the beat of her sole earbud, and she didn’t quite look at Mark when he talked.

  “Who the hell are you?” she said. “What’s this about? Are you a cop?”

  “Not exactly,” Mark said. He squinted hard at her, then sighed. “We know he called you last night. Did he tell you he’d threatened to kill Aidan?”

  She snorted and jerked her shoulders in a shrug. “Everyone threatens to kill Aidan,” she said. “He’s an arrogant prick.”

  “He’s dead!” I blurted.

  That sobered her up. She eyed us both, back and forth.

  Mark nodded. “He overdosed on heroin.”

  “No shit,” she said. “Mus
t have been a bad batch.”

  “Uh, no,” I said. “There was enough in his room to kill a horse.”

  “Bad batch,” she muttered. Her eyes clouded and dimmed.

  Mark said, “Katrina, this is important. Last night, your brother Luther—”

  “This has nothing to do with Luther,” she snapped. “Or me. That kid got a bad batch, that’s all. Shit.”

  I had no idea what the hell she meant by a “bad batch.” Maybe it had been super potent? I’d heard there were newer opiates with names like “fentanyl” where the concentration was so insanely high that cops had actually died from a single touch of the powder.

  And people say they don’t believe in curses and magic.

  What does everyone think is still left to believe? All those fake nonsense words like “fentanyl” are just a desperate con. If they called it “witchwort” or “Powder of Enslaving Doom,” we might finally wake up.

  Mark said, “We have reason to believe that Aidan didn’t order the heroin himself. He’d recently completed rehab, and he seemed determined—”

  “You think Luther ordered him a pile of bags?” she said. “That’s nuts.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Mark said. “Where is Luther?”

  “Why should I tell you?” she said. “Besides, how do you think Luther would even get that kind of cash? That kid can barely put gas in his truck.”

  Ouch. I saw Mark frown; neither of us had thought of this.

  Heroin might be cheap these days, but not that cheap. Not for a guy like Luther, not if we were talking a huge pile worth hundreds of dollars or more. It wasn’t impossible, but it was a pricey way to kill someone.

  Katrina wasn’t finished. “More important, Luther hates this shit. You go talk to your fancy pants doctor, don’t you know Luther protested that son of a bitch for what he did to Roxanne?”

  Mark squinted. Then he said, quietly, “You and Roxanne were close?”

  “Damn straight. Roommates in college, kept in touch… I was in her damn wedding party when she married that asshole Ed.”