Murder Feels Crazy

by Bill Alive

  Mark sighed. “What are you doing?”

  “I am reporting in the public interest,” said Hannigan-Quinn. “This street where you just happen to be driving is the home of one Katrina Trudy, who may be connected to the heroin overdose of Aidan Cull.”

  “Heroin overdose?” Mark said.

  Hannigan-Quinn’s face twisted. “Don’t insult my intelligence,” he snarled. “You’ve been meddling in every big story in this town since that glider crash. And don’t think you put me off the scent by skipping Cull’s funeral.”

  “Glad to hear you attended,” Mark said. “I’m sure your consoling presence was a comfort to the mourners.”

  Hannigan-Quinn bristled anew. His mustache was spiking nearly horizontal. “This is no joke, Falcon,” he snapped. “I have strong reason to suspect that our town is teetering on the brink of the opiate epidemic. And Katrina Trudy may be connected.”

  Behind him, fifty feet away, Katrina was sitting in Golitsyn’s front seat, pawing through a plastic bag he’d handed her. Even at this distance, through the windshield, something about her movements seemed… off. Frantic.

  Mark said, “That sounds like wild speculation.”

  “On the contrary,” snapped Hannigan-Quinn. He slapped a hand on my open window and leaned down, pretty much in my face. “Katrina keeps a blog. She tried to use a pen name, but I easily tracked her down.”

  “A blog?” Mark said. For the first time in this conversation, he perked up. “She writes online about using heroin?”

  In the white hybrid, Katrina and Golitsyn seemed to be arguing now. Their faces were blurred, but they were both jabbing their hands and moving like they were yelling.

  Hannigan-Quinn nodded at Mark. “She’s been writing entries for months. ‘HurricaneGirl’… it was too easy.”

  Behind him, Katrina burst out of the car. She started to twist away, then turned back to fire a last conversational barb.

  “Interesting,” Mark said. “Well, nice catching up with you, HQ—”

  “Not so fast, Falcon. Tit for tat.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You didn’t say what you’re doing here.”

  Mark twisted in his seat and squinted directly into Hannigan-Quinn’s glare.

  Dread prickled down my neck.

  Mark said, “Mustache envy? Really?”

  The bristling editor gaped. “I don’t… how dare you…”

  “Would you just get off my car?” Mark said. “It’s not my fault I trigger memories of your appalling old gym teacher.”

  “Whoa,” I whispered.

  Now Hannigan-Quinn goggled. But instead of backing off, he lunged right through my window.

  I shrank back as far as I could, but the gray bristles were practically scratching my cheek. If I wasn’t careful, that mustache might poke my eye out.

  “How the hell do you know that?” he rasped.

  I flinched. For the first time ever, Hannigan-Quinn sounded almost dangerous.

  Mark shrugged. “Amateur sleuthing.”

  Out the windshield, peering under the editorial chin, I managed to spot a new crisis. “Mark, look!” I said.

  But it was too late.

  Golitsyn’s white hybrid was zipping off down the street.

  Hannigan-Quinn jerked back out the window to see. “A late-model white Solotane hybrid,” he muttered, as if he were jotting this on his mental notepad. “Why are you two so interested?”

  Down the street, Katrina saw him staring. She scowled at him, then glared right at me.

  Then she hoofed it the other way around the block.

  So. The stakeout was pretty much an epic fail.

  But we’d made things even worse than we knew…

  Chapter 26

  Mark floored it down the street, but Golitsyn was long gone.

  “Damn it!” He slammed the steering wheel. “And now Katrina’s onto us!”

  He whipped around a car, passing it in the oncoming lane. Thunder was howling. We were doing at least forty on a neighborhood street.

  “Whoa, hey,” I said. “Let’s take a walk.”

  “WHAT?” he yelled.

  “Or, you can kill some kid because you’re pissed.”

  He growled, but he did brake. My gut uncoiled.

  “We can go down Main Street,” I said. “Figure out our next move. Walking boosts creativity. There was this one study where they gave three different groups this really hard math problem, and the first group had to eat an entire chocolate cake… actually no, I think I’m mixing that up…”

  Mark groaned.

  He parked at the town square, and we stepped out into the chill November morning. The Main Street shops seemed to be huddling together to stay warm, but at least all the Christmas lights were cheery in the gray. Although Thanksgiving still wasn’t until next week, Christmas had officially arrived here, and I thought we could both use a few wreaths and carols.

  Except that Mark stomped along scowling, oblivious to the holiday charm.

  “Okay,” I said. “We lost Golitsyn for now, and Katrina spotted us. But, on the bright side…”

  I trailed off. The cold rainy mist was seeping through into my scalp.

  Mark arched his eyebrows.

  I said, “Well, how am I supposed to think of anything with you radiating all that glummage?”

  “Ah. So you’re an empath now?”

  “I’m just a human being! You’re going to make the holly wilt!”

  Mark smirked. His invisible Aura of Gloom dissipated slightly, from Toxic to Merely Nauseating.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “Studies show that negative emotions reduce creativity and problem-solving skills?”

  “Exactly!” I said. “How’d you know?”

  He sighed. “Fine, Pete. Why not. Let’s use all your tasty little tricks to feel so fantastic that this case solves itself.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Sure,” He pulled out his phone. “You’ve got ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes? I can’t promise this stuff’ll make you feel better in ten minutes. I can’t even do that myself—”

  “Nine minutes and forty-five seconds,” he said. “Otherwise, you quit pushing these feel-good-when-your-life-sucks hacks. Forever.”

  “What? Whoa!” I said. “I’m not sure I agreed to this—”

  “Nine minutes, thirty seconds.”

  “Okay! Wow! Let’s see…” I darted frantic gazes in every direction. “It’s all about the present moment, you know? Like, all these pretty Christmas decorations. You can focus on them, maybe think about your own Christmas plans…”

  He stiffened a bit as he walked. “Let’s see. I haven’t had a tree in years.”

  I gasped. “No tree? What do you even do?”

  “It has just been me.”

  “Oh my gosh. What about Thanksgiving?”

  “Did you miss the part about my family?”

  “This is intolerable!” I said. “We are absolutely going to make this Thanksgiving something special.”

  Somehow I got this all out of my mouth before remembering how my Thanksgiving was going to be “special” for sure.

  But Mark, being Mark, had the perfect tact.

  “There’s no such thing as a special Thanksgiving,” Mark said. “Thanksgiving is the Holiday of Obligatory Family Pain. A sadistic annual duty to check in with the people who can trigger your deepest torture, just by looking at you…”

  “Okay, okay! Wow!” I said, deeply grateful. “Any chance you’re zooming in on the negative, Mr. Grinch?”

  He shrugged again. “I can’t change reality.”

  “Unless your focus determines your reality.”

  He rubbed his eyebrows. “You did not just quote Phantom Menace.”

  “Look who got the reference!” I exulted. “But it’s true, you can focus on anything you want. How about… oh, your date with Gwen! You can do a visualization! Imagine… you’re bowling…”

  “You’d better keep
this PG, young man.”

  “Mark! This really works! Athletes visualize winning all the time! The Russian Olympic team even tested it, the coaches split their athletes into three different groups… or was it four…”

  “Someone’s going to split you into three different groups.”

  “Mark! You said I had ten minutes!”

  He growled, but he checked his phone. “Fine.”

  “Okay. So you’re there at the bowling alley… Gwen’s looking gorgeous… you’re feeling some serious chemistry…”

  “I think you’re mixing this up with a deodorant commercial.”

  “Shh! You’re imagining! As you both reach for your bowling ball, your hands brush… POW.”

  Mark groaned.

  I soldiered on. “And there’s this moment of… connection… but then you expertly defuse it with something hilarious. She laughs.”

  In spite of himself, Mark’s lips twitched.

  “Ah ha! See! And then she’s like, that’s cheating, I can’t bowl straight if I’m laughing, and she shoves you back to make it even, but it’s like, not just her shoulder, it’s her hip too.”

  Mark frowned. “This is really detailed.”

  “That’s the key! You have to visualize as many details as possible! That’s how you make your reality!”

  Mark’s frown deepened.

  And yet… the lip twitch blossomed into a genuine half smile. And he looked happy again, imagining all this as we walked along beside the old lampposts festooned with Christmas lights. And the sun peeked out, and all the white lights and red bows and green, um, greenery gave Main Street this cozy glow… like Bedford Falls on a good day.

  Then Mark winced.

  He stopped and scanned the area, alert as a hound.

  “What is it?” I said.

  He locked his gaze and nodded across the street toward a store window. “Jocelyn,” he muttered. “Look.”

  I hadn’t seen Jocelyn since her son’s death, so the sudden sight of her browsing in some store was jarring. I recognized her thin figure and pinned blonde hair, but she was turned away and I couldn’t see her face. She was staring at some posters — all the walls were plastered with posters of mountains or beaches or whimsical castles.

  “A travel agency?” I said.

  Mark nodded, and another wince creased his face. “Remember? They were planning a cruise.”

  “They’re still doing that?” I said. “After Aidan?”

  Then Jocelyn turned our way.

  She’d aged at least a decade.

  Grief had carved fresh lines deep across her face. Her eyes had sunk into dark caverns.

  She didn’t notice us staring. She had turned to make some comment to her husband Wallace, who was standing at an awkward distance beside a travel agent in a pantsuit. The agent creased her lips at Jocelyn in a wide, cheeky, anxious smile, but she backed a step away.

  Jocelyn attempted a return smile… and the visible effort it cost her made me wince.

  Mark grunted in pain. “So much for skipping the funeral,” he muttered.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “That’ll make it go away.”

  Jocelyn tried to focus on some glitzy glossy cruise boat poster. But her fake smile torqued and broke, and her face crumpled. She clenched her lips and her eyes shut, and she pinched the bridge of her nose.

  Wallace came to her. He enfolded her in his big arms, and she cried. She cried into his shoulder, heaving but silent behind the glass, framed with the strands of Christmas lights and the cheerful, empty street.

  “That’s it,” Mark said. “This ends now.”

  Chapter 27

  Except it didn’t. Not in time. Not even close.

  Mark drove most of the way home before he could say anything more. Finally, he said, “I’ll call Gwen. We saw the fricking deal, she’ll have to put a priority on tracking down Golitsyn.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or she might just be mad we did the stakeout on our own… and lost him.”

  He sighed.

  “I mean, you should still totally call her,” I added, wishing I hadn’t said anything.

  “Yeah.”

  But by the time we actually did get home, he muttered that he’d check on a few client things first.

  I went to my tiny room, pulled out the ancient laptop Mark’s been loaning me, and settled in to tackle my own neglected tasks. No, I was not just watching videos and checking Tribesy (although it had been awhile)… in fact, if you must know, I actually dove in and banged out the first few chapters of this very book. Which is weird.

  Hours later, when I went out for my bedtime bathroom run, Mark was still locked in to his multiple monitors.

  “What did Gwen say?” I asked.

  “Hmm?” He twisted slowly away from the screens, and rubbed his face. “Oh, yeah. Wow. I really went down the rabbit hole here.”

  “You didn’t call her yet?”

  He avoided my look. “It’s late. I’ll catch her tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Pete, I’ve only got this one client right now. I really need to keep them happy. Unless you have some better plan for the mortgage.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said.

  But it didn’t take an empath to see that Mark knew he wasn’t fooling anyone.

  The next morning, I woke up to Mark having a tense conversation on the phone. Again.

  My gut lurched. This was becoming a bad habit.

  But the second I rushed out into the living room, I knew this was no call with Gwen.

  It was worse.

  Mark was pacing, nodding hard and voicing Maximum Client Mode. “Yes, sir. I assure you, this is a serious misunderstanding, and I will get it straightened out. Absolutely. Yes. Today. I’ll let you know right away.”

  He shut his eyes, nodding his last silent nods until the caller finally released him.

  Then he leapt to his computer and typed like a windstorm.

  “Was that your client?” I said. “I thought you didn’t take calls this early! It’s not even eight o’clock.”

  “I do when they text me a link like this,” he said.

  I looked at his web browser.

  A headline yelled:

  LOCAL HEROIN DEALER SHOT DEAD. ENTIRE STASH STOLEN.

  “Oh my gosh,” I said. “Oh my gosh. Golitsyn got shot? But who shot him?”

  My chest was shaking. Shooting over drugs? Here? What kind of war was starting, here in the country where we’d all felt safe? What if the attack on Ceci had been deliberate… and she might get attacked again? But why?

  Mark snapped, “Keep reading!”

  I slogged through, but the article veered off into a distracting bombastic screed. Must have been Hannigan-Quinn at the keyboard.

  Then I saw why Mark was barely tamping down his panic.

  “Although the police have not yet deigned to announce their suspects,” the article read, “this journalist feels an ethical obligation to note that he himself witnessed, in person, on the very day before this crime, an extremely suspicious surveillance of the same model car as the murder victim.

  “When questioned as to the reason for their surveillance, the two men refused to enlighten this reporter, and instead pursued this car at a speed that was certainly illegal.

  “Given not only the murder, but the cash value of the stolen stash, we therefore encourage the police to pay particular attention to these supposed amateur sleuths: Mark Falcon and Peter Villette.”

  I groaned. “You are kidding me.”

  Mark was already grabbing the keys to the car.

  PART 3

  Chapter 28

  We blasted down the mountain towards town.

  On the way, Mark tried calling the newspaper office, but of course no one picked up.

  “If that idiot loses me this client…” Mark growled, as we rattled down the gravel road. “That’s what I get for trying to help.”

  “Also, that Golitsyn guy is dead,�
� I ventured.

  “I wasn’t saying that doesn’t suck,” Mark snapped. “But it’s not like we could have stopped that. Gwen would have ignored me anyway. I already tried to warn her once, didn’t I?”

  I had nothing to say. I hadn’t called her either.

  I mean, the guy was a drug dealer. The profession has its risks.

  But at least from a distance, he hadn’t looked like some criminal mastermind. Just a skinny immigrant trying to work hard and send the money home.

  We pulled into Main Street, which, unlike yesterday, was practically sunny. But the cheery bright vibe only creeped me out… the house where the article said they’d found Golitsyn was only a few blocks away.

  In fact, Gwen and the other cops were probably still there. Maybe even the corpse.

  Meanwhile, clueless pedestrians window-shopped.

  I thought, is this how an epidemic looks at the start? How many more bodies would quietly pile up, overdosed and blue, before the stack finally toppled where we all couldn’t miss it?

  “Way to think positive,” Mark muttered. “Want my wool hat?”

  I ignored this. “How are we going to find Hannigan-Quinn?” I said. “I don’t even know where his office is.”

  “Too late,” he said, and parked at the curb.

  “Too late for what?” I said. “You found him?”

  Mark nodded ahead, at the coffee shop on a corner. Back Mosby currently has two coffee shops, one for people who want good coffee, and one for people who want Good Coffee, capitalized, with organic, fair trade, sustainably sourced beans that were both individually kissed by the farmers’ children and also roasted and ground within the last ten minutes. This corner shop was the latter.

  “Really?” I said. “You think Hannigan-Quinn can drop that much on a coffee?”

  But even as I spoke, the man himself bustled out the door, clutching not only a coffee but a cup of oatmeal with all the fixings. (The Good Coffee shop also offers an oatmeal buffet bar.) As we got out of the car, Hannigan-Quinn spotted Mark, and his eyes glinted with the joy of battle.

  “Mark Falcon,” he called, as we strode to where he stood at the corner crosswalk. “I see you’ve read the paper for once.”