Letters From Rachel

by N L Westaway

  Several hours and several more drinks later, Marlene was teaching Laura the words to the anthem—Marlene had called, ‘We Will Rock You’, by Queen, as it blared through the bar. All the songs from the band had had a resurgence ever since the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ movie had come out, Marlene had informed Laura. Laura didn’t know the movie, hadn’t known who Queen was, but she was happy to learn and sing along. She was most definitely drunk. But she was having fun, and the more she drank the less she thought about how scared she was, and the less she cared that they were surrounded by strange men. That was until one of them decided he would take the open seat at their table, not take it away, but sit down in it at their table.

  “Professssor Weeeick,” Laura slurred out, then tipped back the last of her latest blue drink.

  “Christiaaan,” Marlene said, slapping her colleague on the arm. “Welcome-welcome—can I get you a drink?”

  “Thank you—no, I’m good,” he said in response, lifting the bottle of his still cold and frosty almost full beer. “Are you guys having fun? I saw you ladies belting out the words to the last song.”

  “Aaanthem,” Laura said, correcting him like she knew better.

  “Right—it’s a classic,” he said. “I take it you like Queen, yes?”

  Marlene waved over to the passing waitress. “Two more please,” Marlene said.

  “None for me,” Laura said, horribly aware that she was now seeing two waitresses when she should only see one. She turned back to the professor. “Never heard of themmm,” she said, in answer to his question.

  “You’ve never heard of Queen?” he said, mockingly. “How could you not know Queen, have you been in a cave for the past thirty years?” He moved his chair closer to Laura.

  Laura nodded. “Bassssically yaaa,” she said, her head bobbing still as she leaned her elbows on the table.

  The professor picked up one of the coasters. “What sport was invented in Hawaii?” he asked, reading the question off the back of it.

  “Suuurfiiing,” Laura responded.

  The waitress returned then, quickly sliding the drinks across the small table to Marlene, causing Laura to sway. She turned her head back toward the professor as he took a pull on his beer, then set the bottle on the table next to her. The smell of the beer nearly made her gag.

  “Are you okay?” Marlene asked her.

  “Just feeeeling a little lightheaded, Laura said, leaning on one elbow.

  “Did you eat?” the professor asked, a hint of judgement edging his voice.

  “I didn’t have time to eat, I had to finish orders before leeeaving work—had to russsh to get here,” Laura said. She definitely wasn’t feeling well, and she was now starting to feel hot, too hot in fact, and this guy was leaning in so close she could feel the warmth radiating from his body. “I should go,” she said.

  “Maybe we should both go,” Marlene said, shifting to get off her chair. “I think I’ve had my fill too.”

  Marlene’s words were a relief to Laura’s ears. Fresh air, that was what she needed, and to get away from this furnace of a man. “Excuusss me,” Laura said, moving off her chair to shove past him.

  “Let me walk you ladies out,” he said, getting up from his chair too.

  “Thank you, Christian. That’s kind of you,” Marlene said, linking her arm now with Laura’s. “Let’s go Baker-girl.”

  Marlene guided the two of them out past the patrons and through the main door, but when they hit the fresh air, Laura wobbled. If it hadn’t been so crowded, Laura thought she might have been able to make it out herself, but she was grateful to have Marlene to lean on now.

  Further back along the street near the restaurant’s parking area, there were several taxis lined up, and Marlene waved her arm to signal one over. “Have you got cash for a taxi,” she asked Laura.

  That’s all she had, Laura thought. She didn’t have a credit card, only a debit card, and she’d only gotten that when she’d needed a bank account to get Gwen and herself the cell phones. “Yup,” she said to her friend. When the taxi pulled up, Christian opened the car door for her. “Thanks, Professssor,” she said, sliding into the back seat. When he closed the door, Laura rolled down the window to hang her arms out. “Marlene,” she called to her friend, arms spread out for a hug. Marlene leaned down and gave her a hug and then kissed the side of her head.

  “Were to?” the driver asked.

  Letting go of Marlene, Laura slurred out her address. “Byyye,” she said, waving to Marlene. As the cabbie drove off, she was still waving, but when he took the corner at the end of the block, she was flung back into her seat. She slouched then and closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the seat.

  Laura woke with a startle as the taxi came to an abrupt stop. “That’ll be blaablaablaa,” she barely heard the driver say as she lifted her head. She padded the seat beside her in search of her purse. Seizing it, she stuck her hand in under the flap and pulled out her wallet. Then she drew a twenty from the fold and handed it to the guy. It had cost her seventeen dollars to get here so a twenty would be plenty she figured. “Keep the change,” she said, struggling out of her seatbelt to open the door. She had barely gotten out of the car and shut the door before the taxi had sped off down the road.

  Standing now at the edge of the walkway into her housing community, Laura wondered how late it was. She had no idea, though she was aware of how dark and quiet it was, oh, and how drunk she felt. She turned then in a slow careful circle surveying the street.

  There was nothing but the glare of the dim streetlights off the wet road that she could make out in the darkness beyond were she stood. It must have rained earlier when she’d been in the restaurant. She flung the strap of her purse over her shoulder as she turned back towards the path to her housing community, and the motion caused her to sway and stumble a bit. She noticed then that the small lights that normally lit the pathway, were not on for some reason, so she was going to have to take this slow and steady if she was going to make it to her house without falling and cracking her head open.

  Before taking a step, she reached into her bag and pulled out the small flashlight she always kept for emergencies. The power had gone out at the bakery once and it had come in handy then. She switched it to on, and the path ahead of her shone to life. Then she took a step onto the curb but missed, scraping the front of her shoe on the edge. “Okay, Laura—get it together,” she whispered to herself, making another attempt to step up.

  She had only taken a few steps forward when a crash sounded to the left. Laura turned to shine the light in that direction, but the sudden movement caused her to trip again as she stepped off the path and onto the wet grass. Her foot slipped out from under her and she slammed down hard onto the ground. Not only was she drunk, now she was wet and drunk, and was going to have a nasty bruise on her hip from the fall. Aaand the lit flashlight she had been holding was now off and lost out into the wet darkness. “Dammit,” she said, not as a whisper, and rolled to her opposite side to push up onto her knees. There was no getting around it, she was soaked now, so who cared if her knees got wet too. Steadying herself she got to her feet.

  She knew the general direction of her home, so with her hands outstretched, she shuffled her feet along the grass until she hit the paved path. Lifting a foot, she cautiously stepped onto the path, then turned slowly in the direction she knew was towards home. One step at a time, she moved, slow and sort of steady, she made her way to the area softly lit by the front door lights of the houses.

  At the end of her walkway to her house, she took the three steps up to the door. Another crashing sound rumbled behind her and she turned. She stared out into the darkness, the overhead door light marring her night vision now. Footsteps echoed, slow and heavy on the approach and heading her way. She turned back to the door with a wobble, rifling through her purse to find her keys. Finding them, she fiddled to get the right one in the keyhole. When the key turned, she twisted the doorknob
and pushed open the door, then promptly stepped inside, slamming the door shut to lean against it. She was breathing so hard she thought she might throw up, and she slid to the floor too drunk and too unnerved to do anything else. It was then that she realized the entry light in the front hall was also out. She had purposely left it on knowing she might be late.

  The sound of her heart pounded in her ears causing her to feel even more ill. She tried to take in a cleansing breath but doing so only made her feel more nauseous. Again, she squinted into the darkness now of her home, willing her night vision to identify the objects normally within view of the front door. She could almost make out the entry table and the edge of the opening into the main area of the first floor.

  Laura squinted again, just as someone banged on the front door, and she nearly peed her pants. “Laura? It’s Mrs. Gregson—your neighbor. Is everything alright?” The woman banged again. “My husband said he thought he saw you, saw you fall.”

  Laura leaned forward and pushed to her feet. “Hi Mrs. Gregson—I’m okay. I fell, yes—but I’m fine. Thank you for checking on me,” Laura called through the door to the woman on the other side. Then she turned and kicked off her wet shoes.

  “The lights are all out on the grounds—my husband called the 24-hour service line, but they can’t come out until tomorrow,” her neighbor informed her.

  “Tell your husband—thank you, as well. Good night,” Laura called, as she slid her shoulder along the wall towards the opening to the main area of her home. Through the opening, she found her way across the first floor to the bottom of the stairs with the help of the dim front-door light stealing through the mostly closed curtain in the living room. From the bottom of the stairs, she could see that the light in her bedroom was on, its glow peeking out from a crack in the door. It gave off enough illumination for her to get her bearings, climb the stairs and find her way to her bedroom.

  In her room, she stumbled through peeling off her wet clothes on the way to her tiny en-suite bathroom, which was simply a toilet and sink, she’d had to share the shower in the other upstairs bathroom with her daughter. Laura switched on the bathroom light, then leaned against the sink to stare into the mirror.

  She was a mess. And she was disappointed with herself for drinking so much, but she was more frustrated with herself for letting her guard down. She stuck out her tongue, then groaned.

  It was blue.

  Chapter 11

  Wednesday, 8 a.m. - Home of Captain Bradly Stinson - Berkley MI

  Scott pulled the ambulance up to the gate and then leaned out the window to speak to the man in the booth. The area was one of those neighborhoods that had the security guard out front and you had to get permission to get in, and it was at a location with very low call volume, so if you got a call, it was usually pretty serious.

  They had been at the end of their shift when they’d gotten the call from dispatch, instructing that they needed to go priority 4, lights and sirens, on a shots fired, possible suicide, to this affluent neighborhood in Berkeley. The neighbor’s nanny had called 911 after the 10-year-old boy she took care of, had said the guy who lives next door was parked in his driveway and that the boy thought he had heard a gunshot earlier when he’d first woken up. They had been given no other information, other than the boy had locked himself in the house, and police were already en route as it was their dispatch that had gotten the call first.

  The guard waved them through the security gate, just as their own dispatch informed them the police had arrived on scene, that they had secured the scene, and there was an adult male in his car with a shotgun wound to his chest.

  They pulled up to a house that had a three-car garage and was just as huge as the rest they had seen on the lengthy drive in, this one was not on, but near to the golf course that catered to its wealthy residents.

  Gwen got out of the ambulance and walked over to a late-model BMW. It was her turn to run the call, and she noted that none of the doors or windows of the car were open. It was not running and there were no lights on, nor was the radio playing. On-site, there were four police officers, one in particular was hovering around the car, and he looked like a veteran cop, Gwen noted, as he didn’t seem fazed by this scene at all. Then as Gwen reached for the door handle, the officer said, “Oh, he’s obviously dead—you don’t need to mess with my crime scene.”

  Gwen pulled back and looked through the driver’s side window to see a male in his mid-50s, lifeless in the driver’s seat, a shotgun propped between the steering wheel and the guy’s chest. His hands were sitting on his lap, palms up, as if he were meditating. His eyes were wide open, head resting on the headrest, and his mouth was slightly open with no blood showing. He was not breathing and not moving. Gwen could see he was dressed in a denim shirt, two buttons done up at the top but the rest of the shirt was open, and he had a white t-shirt on under it, the hem of it pulled out over his jeans, but she couldn’t be sure about his feet. And other than a clear bloody blast injury where the gun was still propped on his chest, she couldn’t see any significant signs to tell her that he didn’t have a pulse. She knew he didn’t qualify for obviously dead just by looking at him, she had to put her hands on him. “I have to go in the car,” Gwen said, noting that the officer was getting a bit feisty and seemed upset now that she was going to mess with his forensic evidence.

  “Don’t touch anything. Don’t you know a dead man when you see one?” the officer said, resting his hands on the sides of his utility belt.

  Being her supervisor, Scott stepped in then, and said, “Clearly you have no respect for her medical authority.” Scott turned to look at Gwen, then back at the officer. “She has to,” Scott stated, emphasis on the has.

  With that, the officer shut up, but he didn’t leave his position at the passenger side window.

  Gwen opened the door; it was particularly warm in contrast to the cooler morning air. It smelled like motor oil, cigarette smoke, and gun powder. “Had the car been running when they got here?” she asked the officer.

  “No,” he said, “and no one other than you has touched any of my crime scene.”

  “There is no obvious significant blood loss and no pulse,” Gwen stated. Now she had to draw back the two shirts away from the neck area to look at the wound without disturbing the area of the gun shot. Gwen saw then that the blast had blown the man’s intestines out of his body, but they had been so neatly tucked inside his shirt that it had not been evident initially. Now he fit the obviously dead criteria and she didn’t need to touch him anymore.

  As Gwen was leaning back out of the car, another police officer was escorting the 10-year-old boy from next door, out of the house, right by the open door to the car. The kid, small for his age, had on his school backpack and had clearly been crying, and now he had a full view of the origin of that gunshot he had heard. They were on a three-car-wide driveway and the female police officer had to go and walk him right by the car. Gwen shook her head and then glanced back at the man in the car.

  She leaned in to see two small marks that looked like taser burns on the side of the guy’s jaw, and there was a two-inch wide band discolouring the skin of his neck. When Gwen leaned out again, Detective Franklin was pulling up alongside the BMW in a dark blue Crown Victoria. He got out and circled around to the side of the car Gwen was standing at.

  “Brad Stinson,” Detective Franklin said, leaning down to look into the car. “He worked with my dad back in my hometown.”

  “There’s something you should see, Gwen said. “Check his neck.”

  “Neck? I thought this was a shotgun wound to the chest.”

  “It was—is, but something is off. Looks like he was tasered in the head and then strangled, then shot. The bruising is showing around the neck—same as the others.”

  “Others?” he asked, straightening. Then he barked out an order to the officer who had been doing all the hovering. “Get your forensic guy over here. We need photos of his head and neck�
�all sides.” The officer just stared at him. “Now!” Detective Franklin shouted. “Good catch,” he said, turning to Gwen.

  Once the photos and details were taken, Detective Franklin suggested Scott and Gwen meet with him again at the diner. And like last time, they swapped out their rig for Scott’s truck to drive over to meet up with his dad.

  “Coffees—all around, please,” Detective Franklin said to the waitress. When she left, he said, “Stinson was younger than my father, but he has been on the force a long time. He moved here nearly 20 years ago with his wife, she’s a lawyer. He’s a captain now—or was.”

  The waitress dropped off their coffees, and said, “I’ll be right back to take your orders.” Then she was off again.

  “Before we left the scene, we found out he was going through a divorce and the wife had kicked him out of the house. He shouldn’t have been there,” Scott said. “The nanny next door said he had been in the driveway the other day, shouting at the wife, threatening to hurt himself.”

  “Yes, I know—I got a similar rundown on the way there,” Detective Franklin said, before taking a sip of his scalding black coffee.

  Gwen winced, then said, “That’s pretty cruel—if his intention was to kill himself in the driveway so his wife would find him and be traumatized forever. But it was that little boy—the neighbor’s kid, who would suffer all that trauma after seeing the body in the car.”.

  “I didn’t know about the boy,” Detective Franklin said. “And you’re right, Scott, he shouldn’t have been there, but what makes this case so intriguing, is that we need to determine if this was a murder or a suicide or somehow both.”

  “The marks show the same MO as the serial killer, but this time it was a cop instead of a professor,” Gwen said, adding more to the detective’s bemusement.

  “Not like a serial killer to change MOs,” he said, “but the killer had been dormant for six years, prior to that professor being killed at your college.” He sipped his coffee again. “I’m not sure why the killer would murder him, but he was an ass, from what I remember,” he said, shaking his head.