Murder Feels Crazy

by Bill Alive

  “Move it,” Gwen snapped, and then muttered, “Innocent my backside.”

  As they turned the hallway corner, Rachel twisted to give me one last look. But she was too far away for me to tell what she might mean; I could read whatever I wanted in her face.

  “You really think she’s innocent?” I asked Mark, as the cops went in to search the apartment.

  Mark sighed. “Yeah.”

  I exhaled, blissing out with relief. Then I thought, Are you really concerned for HER? Or are you just hoping to get another chance later? With this woman you don’t even know?

  Mercifully, my phone rang.

  It was Ceci.

  “Pete?” she gasped.

  She sounded scared.

  Which hit me in the gut. I forgot Rachel existed.

  “Pete, I need you to come to get me,” she begged. “Now.”

  Chapter 42

  “Call her again,” Mark said.

  “I’m trying!” I said. “The reception’s crap out here!”

  We were racing Thunder through the night over the back country roads, hurtling toward Dr. Paul’s mansion. Which was, of course, miles deep into the mountains, and very much alone.

  Before the call had cut out, Ceci had told me that after that delectable dinner at the mansion, Dr. Paul had put the moves on her, leaning on her hard to stay the night. When she’d finally issued the ultimatum to take her the hell home, he’d made a show of trying to start his fancy car, but, what do you know, car trouble. And Mistique the elderly chef had already left for the night…

  “You’re sure he wasn’t threatening her?” Mark said.

  “I don’t know! The call cut out! Wait, there it is!”

  We screeched onto the gravel of a long, long driveway. Far ahead, probably a freaking mile, an enormous old mansion squatted in the night. The moon had gone, but the mansion’s wall of windows blazed with lights, like a solitary galaxy unto itself.

  Thunder rattled up the drive, agonizingly slow; the guy could easily strangle Ceci two or three times by the time we got there. It didn’t even feel like we were getting closer…

  One of those old historical marker signs flashed by, saying something about how these were the grounds of an old plantation. I realized that a dark cluster of log cabins in the shadow of the mansion might once have been slave quarters. You can always get rich on the pain of slaves.

  Something moved in the upstairs window. Or someone.

  “Crap, you see that?” I said. “Look!”

  But Mark braked.

  “What are you doing?” I shrieked. “Someone’s up there!”

  “She’s right here,” Mark said, quiet and relieved.

  I squinted through the windshield into the night. At first, all I saw were shadows.

  Then, one of the shadows was hustling toward us, only a few yards away. Carrying a pair of fancy sandals with heels.

  “Get in the back,” Mark told me.

  “What?” I said. “Why?”

  Mark fixed me with an angry glare. “Don’t blow this.”

  I was so churned up I didn’t even know what I was feeling anymore… mostly just relief that she was probably okay. But he looked so serious that I jumped out into the cold night.

  I still couldn’t see her face, only the mansion lights blinding behind her.

  “You okay?” I asked her.

  “Just get in, get in the car,” she said.

  I flinched. That was a voice I didn’t hear from her much. The one she saved for when one of her hospital kids had just been told the leukemia was back.

  We got in the backseat, each sitting stiff and alone, and Mark reversed us all the long way back down the slow drive. Only when we were finally on the road again, heading home, did Ceci exhale and start to look like herself.

  “Thanks,” she said, and flashed me a radiant smile of appreciation.

  She was still decked out in her makeup and her fancy shirt, but the hustle down the driveway had flushed her cheeks and streaked the shirt with sweat… the two sides of Ceci finally getting to show at once.

  “Are you okay?” I said.

  “I’m fine, it’s fine. Thanks for coming.”

  “Did he mess with you?”

  “No. It’s fine. Please, can we just…” She rubbed her face.

  “I always knew that guy was a tool,” I said.

  Ceci winced.

  “I mean…” I fumbled.

  “No, go ahead, Pete,” Ceci said. “Please. I would like nothing better than to hear you mansplain how if I’d only consulted you…”

  She trailed off and stared out the window.

  SAY SORRY, YOU IDIOT.

  I winced, and glared at the bald back of Mark’s head. Mind blasting? Now? Really?

  He eyed me in the rearview mirror.

  I sighed. “Sorry,” I muttered.

  She sighed too.

  Then, without warning, she leaned toward me… her head on a slow collision course with my shoulder.

  I froze. All I could think of were dead flowers in the closet.

  PUT YOUR ARM AROUND HER, Mark mind-blasted.

  “Back off!” I snapped.

  Now Ceci froze. She gaped like I’d slapped her.

  “Oh my gosh, no no no, not you—” I spluttered.

  She scrunched back against her door, as far from me as she could get, and stared out the window. “I should have called a taxi.”

  “It’s not like that!” I said.

  “Like what?” she said. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about!”

  “I just… I thought he was a good guy who really liked you.”

  “You just said you always knew he was a tool!”

  “I mean, that too—”

  “What are you even trying to say, Pete?”

  “Nothing! I don’t know! Forget it!”

  YOU’RE NOT SERIOUSLY STUCK ON RACHEL? Mark mind-blasted.

  “This is not about Rachel!” I shouted at Mark’s head.

  “Who’s Rachel?” Ceci said.

  Mark facepalmed.

  “Nobody!” I said. “Just this girl who came bowling.”

  Mark coughed. “And then got arrested for murder.”

  “WHAT?” Ceci shrieked.

  “Mark!” I said. “You said Rachel’s innocent!”

  “Well, that’s not exactly the word I’d use—”

  Ceci groaned. “Pete, you are unreal.”

  “I can’t help how I feel!”

  Mark slammed the steering wheel with both hands and barked, “I know how you feel! Both of you!”

  Ceci and I jolted. And then we went still.

  “I know it may sound brutal and arrogant,” he snapped, “but allow me to remind you that I am a fricking empath. I get all the feels. I get all the delights of compare and contrast. Ceci with Dr. Paul. Pete with Rachel. And now, the two of you together in the back seat—”

  “Stop,” Ceci said. Her voice was cold. Distant. Adult.

  Mark eyed her in the mirror. “Can I please just make this easy for you?”

  “Pull over,” she said. “I’m serious.”

  “Ceci,” Mark said. “Come on. We don’t get unlimited time.”

  “Now!” she barked.

  Mark winced.

  He protested, but she was adamant. We were back in town on a neighborhood street and almost at her place anyway, so he sighed and pulled to the curb.

  As Ceci clattered out the door, he said, “Sorry. I was only trying to help.”

  “Of course you were,” she said. “We would all be so lost without your wisdom and guidance.” She glared at me. “And you…”

  But words failed her. She slammed the door and stalked off into the night.

  If only that had been the worst that we’d do to her.

  Chapter 43

  I sat alone in the backseat, stunned. Mark didn’t move the car.

  At last I said, “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “Let’s go see Katrina,” Mark said.
/>
  “What?”

  Mark pulled Thunder back onto the street. “Gwen told me the cops have been watching Katrina’s place for days, but there’s been no sign of either her sneaking out or the next delivery boy sneaking in. Hard to believe she’s stayed sober this long.”

  “What the hell does this have to do with anything?”

  “Gwen and I had planned to check it out. After the bowling. Not my first choice for a romantic coda, but honestly, the date was pretty much done. Funny how it kills the buzz to bring a murder suspect.”

  This would have been a good entry point to work in an apology about that.

  But just then, I wasn’t feeling super contrite. “Why’d you have to bring up Rachel with Ceci?” I snapped

  “That was you.”

  “You were shouting in my head!”

  He frowned at me in the mirror. “It’s not shouting. Is it?”

  “YES! Put my arm around her? What the hell? You had no business trying to get involved!”

  “And you have no business acting like you’re fricking immortal.”

  “Oh my gosh! We’re not even twenty-five!”

  “How the hell do you think this aging thing works?” he snapped, with a louder edge. “You think there’s some great transmogrification? You don’t feel different, Pete. You just start losing stuff. You don’t get older, everyone else gets younger. And really really stupid.”

  “And then the old guys know best for everyone. Great.”

  “You two both just almost had sex with near-strangers! And they both might be fricking murderers.”

  “And you were so much better?” I said. “When you were my age, you were sleeping with a drug addict!”

  Mark’s face spasmed with real pain, and I instantly regretted what I’d said.

  In silence, he parked on a familiar, crappy street. He cut the engine, opened his door, and said, “Speaking of human persons with dignity who suffer from addiction issues… let’s go.”

  The November night was getting cold and bitey, and we hustled down the block toward the decrepit house. Mark nodded at the two officers looking “discreet” in the parked “plainclothes” car, which is famous around Back Mosby, because we only have the one, and it’s got more antennae than a news van.

  By night, the ancestral home of Aunt Dolores glowered with even gloomier pique than before. It’d been awhile since I read that House of Usher thing, but I’m not sure even Poe could have dealt with these lawn ornaments.

  “Listen,” Mark said, as we climbed the creaky steps of the porch. “I know the thing with your parents is really hard.”

  I tensed. “Really? You’re going there? Now?”

  “Yes. Because you’re going to fricking blink and be Katrina’s age, still thinking you’ve got all the time in the world to find your Perfect Safe Princess.”

  “Whoa, where is this coming from?” I said. “Did you vibe that Katrina’s some super-demanding romantic who missed her one chance at True Love?”

  “No,” Mark said. “I don’t believe in One True Love.”

  I gasped. Maybe. Okay, I did.

  “There’s seven billion people,” Mark said. “I’m more into love as a choice.”

  I goggled.

  And I don’t goggle lightly. (Do I?)

  Finally, I said, “Are you trying to say… do you mean that you vibed that Katrina once had some nice guy that she felt close to, and they cared about each other, and they could have made it work and been happy, whatever that means, BUT… she had all these anxieties, and he didn’t light her up like, say, Justin Bieber… or I don’t know why I keep saying Justin Bieber, for her I guess it would have been Frank Sinatra?”

  With an enigmatic shrug, Mark knocked on the rotting door.

  “That’s an enigmatic shrug,” I said. “If you’d really vibed all that, you would say.”

  He shrugged.

  “So you’re seriously saying I’m going to wind up doing heroin.”

  “No, now you’re putting words in my mouth.”

  “You’re putting words in my brain.”

  Only when I have to, he mind-blasted. And I try to be quick, it stinks in here.

  “WOULD YOU SHUT UP!” I yelled.

  And of course, there stood Aunt Dolores in a black robe, having opened her door as quiet as a ninja, and now staring at me like I was nuts.

  Mark smoothed into a smile. “So sorry to disturb you,” he said. “Could we have a quick word with Katrina?”

  “It’s quite late,” she rasped, and her possibly malevolent growl went creepy-crawly down my back. I’d forgotten about that. “She’s asleep.”

  Mark said, “I highly doubt that.”

  But as he said it, he squinted hard.

  Aunt Dolores wasn’t looking so great. Her thick white braid had gotten ratty, and the wrinkles at her eyes had grooved and drooped. She was clutching her dark robe shut against the cold, but her bony white fist was trembling.

  Actually, all of her was trembling.

  Mark caught his breath. Then he pushed past the woman and shouted for Katrina.

  I gaped. What the hell? He was just running into this lady’s house?

  Mark tore up the stairs, still shouting Katrina’s name.

  Dolores lurched and scampered after him, shouting, “Stop! Stop! She’s not well!”

  I rushed in — I couldn’t just stand on the stupid porch. Dolores was staggering up the stairs after Mark, and right as I reached her, she slipped, but I caught her arm. She felt so light and frail, I was afraid she might snap.

  “Which room is hers?” Mark called, as Dolores and I made it to the upstairs hallway. The musty mildew cloyed you even thicker up here, and the bare hallway bulb lit a wretched row of doors.

  But the next second, he’d already spotted that the last door had posters of some 1980s rockers. He knocked hard. “Katrina! Katrina!”

  Dolores rasped, “She never opens.”

  Mark stopped knocking, and he stood very still.

  Then he said to me, “Call Gwen. She’s gone.”

  “She snuck out?” I said.

  He yanked the knob, rattled it, and then backed up and kicked the door.

  Both Dolores and I protested, but we both shut up when we saw his face.

  Then we saw it all ourselves, in the wan light of the streetlights reaching into the room’s shadow.

  On her bare mattress, Katrina lay distorted and dead. Shriveled orange balloons were scattered everywhere. Like rose petals. The skin of her face was pale and blue, because the heroin had made her brain forget to breathe.

  Beside me, Dolores wrenched with a sob that I’ll remember till I die. Her face convulsed with horror.

  And her grief was what burned into me, worse than any corpse.

  Chapter 44

  So that’s how we wrapped Saturday night. Mark and Gwen’s first date got torpedoed, Ceci and I nearly slept with possible murderers, and the Send a Bunch of Heroin Killer claimed a second victim.

  I’ve had better weekends.

  But the universe was just getting started.

  The next day was Sunday, and I pretty much slept. On Monday, I dragged through work like a zombie. By lunchtime, Vivian gently suggested that I should take a lengthy break, but when I called Mark to pick me up, he wanted to review the case. I was totally ready to go home and crash in front of the TV till I passed out, but I managed to agree.

  We sat on a bench in the town square. Technically, it’s more of a town triangle, and in the center sits our town mascot… an old caboose. For real. Back Mosby, get it? Not the most invigorating town symbol. I guess the caboose came loose and ran over a Union general or something in the Civil War. Hooray.

  Nowadays, in summer, they lean a projector screen against the thing for Town Movie Nights. All these parents and grandparents and kids sit around on those baggy camp chairs watching Finding Nemo or whatever for the twentieth time. It’s nice.

  Not the kind of place where you’d imagine police tape and bloody l
ungs a few blocks down.

  Today the “square” (triangle) felt cold and deserted. Usually there’d be at least a cluster of vets in their power wheelchairs. But on this chilly gray Monday afternoon, a few days before Thanksgiving, there were only a couple loners, each hunched and smoking on a solitary bench.

  It should have felt safe.

  Depressing, maybe. But a place where nothing much would ever happen.

  So why was I tingling with a nervous dread?

  Beside me on the bench, Mark said, “You here?”

  “Yeah, sorry.” I tried to calm down, telling myself that of course I was on edge, we’d found a freaking dead body. That had to be it. Right?

  Then I had this sudden, odd sense that Mark was going to try to… cheer me up?

  Mark settled back onto the bench’s ancient wood. “Okay. We’ve got two deaths from an over-the-top overdose. Someone’s sending huge payloads of heroin to get addicts to kill themselves.”

  “Right.” Super cheerful so far.

  “Of course, we can’t prove that either of these addicts didn’t just order it themselves. Katrina especially, since she was clearly using.”

  “True.”

  Was my pulse racing? What the hell?

  “But how’d she even get the stuff? She was under surveillance,” Mark said, oblivious. “Plus, why would she order such a huge amount? She’d been using for weeks, months, maybe years. She had no reason to order so much at once and then overdose.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You think the killer is whoever shot Golitsyn?” Mark said. “Maybe killing Golitsyn had nothing to do with drug dealer rivalry. Maybe the whole point was to steal his stash and then deliver it all to Katrina in person?”

  “Maybe.”

  The dread was morphing… there was this biting anxiety and strain, like when you know you know the answer on a test, or the name of this intimidating person you’re shaking hands with, but you just can’t see it, it keeps scurrying into shadow.

  “But why kill Golitsyn just to get his stash?” Mark said. “Why not call in an order like they did for Aidan? And who would have the motive to kill both Aidan and Katrina?”

  “True.”

  Mark scowled. “You already said true.”

  I shrugged. “True.”