Mom Meets Her Maker

by James Yaffe

  The living room also had a large number of photographs cluttering the walls: mostly they were close shots of the late Reverend Candy, sometimes looking pious as he communed with his God, sometimes angry as he shook his fist at the Devil, sometimes laughing it up, no doubt as he beat the Devil ignominiously back to hell. A fireplace dominated the opposite wall from the picture window, and a Christmas tree, fully decorated for the season, stood in front of it, almost reaching to the ceiling. Nothing was burning in the fireplace—maybe it was just for show, which is often the case in new houses—and the lights were out on the Christmas tree.

  Then my eye was caught by the strips of white tape on the carpet a couple of feet in front of the Christmas tree. They formed the crude outline of a human body, with the legs slightly bent, one arm sticking up over the head, the other arm sticking out from the chest at a right angle.

  “That’s pretty much the position we found him in,” said Wolkowicz. “More or less on his side, with his right cheek against the carpet.”

  “What killed him?” I asked.

  Wolkowicz pointed to a spot six feet or so away from the “body,” close to the archway. On the floor there, in the wooden area between the end of the carpet and the archway, was another arrangement of white tape, much smaller than the first. “That’s where we found the gun. Your boy must’ve dropped it after he shot the victim.”

  “The killer must’ve dropped it,” Ann put in.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “How long did it take him to die?” I asked.

  “Two shots were fired from the gun, and there are two bullets in Candy’s body—one in the chest, to the left of the heart and a little below, one in his right hip. Neither of them killed him instantly, but there was a lot of internal bleeding, and some external—you can see it on the carpet, around the body—so our estimate at the moment is that he didn’t last more than half an hour.”

  “Nobody in the house heard the shots?”

  “The house was empty, except for the victim. His wife was out doing Christmas shopping, his son and his son’s family don’t live here, and there are no fulltime servants. His wife got home around an hour ago, and by that time he was dead.”

  “Did he have time to call for help?”

  “He tried to. Look at the phone.” I saw it now, resting on the floor next to the sofa, three or four feet away from the body. “We figure he crawled over to it and managed to get it off its table and down to the floor. But he ran out of strength, and either he couldn’t manage to dial or he didn’t have enough voice to talk into the receiver. Anyway, he put the phone back on the hook and tried to communicate in a different way.”

  “What way?”

  “Right over here,” Wolkowicz said. “Now walk carefully, and for God’s sake don’t step on them or Marvin’ll give me hell. As it is, he doesn’t much like the idea of letting you two loose at the scene of the crime.”

  “Must make it tough for him,” Ann said, “since the law says he has to do it.”

  But we lost interest in baiting Wolkowicz when we saw what he was pointing to. On the carpet just a few inches from the body’s outstretched arm were a series of crayon marks. A moment later I realized they were fully formed capital letters, pretty crude and shaky in spots, but since the color of the carpet was beige and the crayon marks were bright red, it was easy to make out what these letters spelled out.

  GOLD, FRANKINCENSE AND

  MYRRH

  The first three words stretched from the lefthand edge of the carpet, and the last word had been scrawled directly under the first one.

  “Oh, there’s no doubt Candy did this,” Wolkowicz was saying. “We found the piece of red crayon between the fingers of his right hand. And he was righthanded, we’ve checked that with his family. And over here, this is where he got the crayons from.”

  A few feet away from the scrawled message was a package of drawing crayons for kids. Its Christmas wrapping had been torn off it, it had been pulled open hastily, several of the crayons had spilled onto the carpet around it. I picked up the box and glanced at it. “Infant Jesus Drawing Set,” it read. “Caution: Crayon marks must be scrubbed out with turpentine and cold water.”

  “You have any theories,” I said, “as to why he used up the last of his strength to write this?”

  “Not really,” Wolkowicz said. “‘Gold, frankincense and myrrh.’ I’m a little rusty on my Bible, but those are the three gifts that the Magi bring to the Christ child, aren’t they? Well, maybe he was trying to call attention to Christmas—to the fight he had with the Meyer kid over the Christmas display in front of this house.”

  “If he wanted to accuse Roger Meyer,” I said, “it would’ve been a hell of a lot easier for him to do it directly. He could’ve written ‘Roger Meyer killed me’—something like that.”

  Wolkowicz shrugged. “He was a dying man. People don’t always think clearly when they’re dying. Anyway, what does it matter? We don’t have to explain this message, we’ve got plenty of evidence against your boy without it.”

  “Oh yes,” said Ann, turning to face him squarely, “I’ve been waiting for this. What evidence do you have against him?”

  Wolkowicz’s pug dog jaw pushed forward. “To begin with, he’s got a motive, which even you can’t get around. Candy was making life miserable for the old Meyer couple, and the son’s already lost his temper once and assaulted the man with a deadly weapon.”

  “That’s what the hearing next week was supposed to determine,” Ann said. “Our contention is that the boy acted in self-defense.”

  “Your contention is now irrelevant,” Wolkowicz said. “Candy’s dead, he can’t testify against anybody in the assault case—which gives your client another good motive for the murder.”

  “Why kill Candy for that? He was sure to be exonerated in court.” On the way here from the Meyer house I had filled Ann in on my talk with Dwayne McKee.

  “That’s your opinion, counselor. Maybe your client didn’t share it. Maybe he wanted a guarantee that he wouldn’t go to jail. Juries are undependable, you never know how they’re going to jump. Dead witnesses are very dependable.”

  “You’re making the boy out to be a moron.”

  “All murderers are morons, you know that. Otherwise we’d never be able to catch them.” He stopped, frowned for a second, then gave a shake of his head and went on, “Next piece of evidence. Your client was at the scene of the crime during the time when the murder could’ve been committed. He left his parents’ house just before four-thirty, went straight down the street to the Candy house—”

  “You’ve got absolutely no proof of that. The boy got a phone call, and that’s why he left his parents’ house.”

  “We’ll argue that the call was from Candy. He wanted to discuss the Christmas decoration issue with your client—who went to see him, lost his temper like he’d already done once before, and grabbed the gun—”

  “Roger Meyer’s never owned a gun in his life.”

  “He used Candy’s own gun, the same one he tried to shoot him with a few days ago. It was in a drawer in the hallway, the Meyer kid saw Candy take it out of there last week. This time he simply beat Candy to it. And incidentally, we’ll have conclusive proof of that tomorrow or the next day at the latest.”

  “What proof?” Ann said with scorn in her voice. Only somebody with long experience at reading the lines around her eyes would have known that her confidence was being shaken.

  “There were smudged fingerprints on the handle of that gun,” Wolkowicz said. “The experts are examining it right now, we’ll have their report soon. But I’m willing to bet at least one of those smudges will turn out to belong to Roger Meyer.”

  “Of course it will. He struggled with Candy over that gun last week. He admits it freely.”

  “The experts will decide if his prints are last week’s smudges or new ones. Anyway, that problem won’t even come up for the footprints.”

  “What footprints?”


  “Shoeprints, to be exact. Didn’t you notice them out in the hallway? There are half a dozen on the carpet out there, moving away from this living room in the direction of the front door. The killer got blood on his shoes, and left a nice trail of it as he hotfooted it out of here. We’ve got photographs of those shoeprints, and we’ve already taken away half a dozen pairs of Roger Meyer’s shoes from his parents’ house.”

  “Did you have a warrant to do that?” Ann asked, very quietly.

  Wolkowicz almost allowed himself a laugh. “Would I do such a thing without a warrant? Do I want this whole case to go out the window on the grounds of illegal search and seizure? Well, those photographs of bloody shoeprints are being compared to Meyer’s shoes right now, and I’ll make another bet—they’ll turn out to be made by shoes of the same size and style.”

  “Still, I gather you didn’t find any bloodstains on the boy’s shoes.”

  “Of course not. He got the bloodstains on the shoes he’s wearing right now, the ones he was wearing when he killed Candy. If he’s still wearing that pair when we pick him up, our case will be airtight. By the way, there’s another little point that might keep you awake tonight. If he isn’t guilty, why did he run out of Candy’s house, and why is he hiding out?”

  “Because he never went into Candy’s house in the first place,” Ann said. “And he isn’t hiding out either. He got a phone call that sent him off on some errand, it has nothing to do with the murder—maybe it’s a girl he’s been trying to make it with, and suddenly she’s in town with only the evening to spare. He’ll show up again late tonight or early tomorrow, and you and your boss will feel like a couple of damn fools.”

  “He was being pretty secretive about that girl, wasn’t he? Why wouldn’t he even tell his parents where he was going?”

  Ann grinned. “Come on, George, you were young once. In spite of appearances, I’m sure you were. Did you fill your parents in on the details whenever you went out with a girl?”

  “Damn right I didn’t. It would’ve killed them before their time. But that’s got nothing to do with the Meyer kid. He was in that house at the time of the murder, you can take it from me. It’s not only the fingerprints and the shoeprints. There’s a witness.”

  Wolkowicz smiled, one of those gloating smiles that he specialized in.

  “You said nobody else was in the house.”

  “This witness was outside the house. Standing across the street, with a perfect view of the front door. He saw everybody who came in and out from three o’clock or so until the squad cars got to the scene. And he’ll testify that Roger Meyer went through the front door around four-thirty, stayed inside for five minutes or so, and came running out again, looking very agitated. Then he jumped into his car that was parked on the curb close to the Meyer house, a green two-door 1979 Volkswagen Jetta—and he drove off, going a lot faster than the legal limit in this neighborhood.”

  “Who’s your witness?” Ann said.

  “Oh no. That I don’t have to tell you yet. Not ’til we’ve got his deposition, sworn to, signed, and notarized. Then we’ll give you his name, all fair and square.”

  “It is a man though?”

  “Did I say so? Oh yes, I said ‘he.’ That was the generic ‘he,’ standing for male or female. I’m usually careful not to use it, knowing that many women nowadays take offense at it. But sometimes old habits just make it slip out. I beg your pardon.”

  “Is it a ‘he’ or isn’t it?”

  Wolkowicz looked at his watch. “It’s after seven, my wife’ll just about kill me if the dinner is ruined. Not that her dinners can be ruined—”

  “Wait a second, George,” Ann said, “we still need a lot of information from you. Was Candy expecting any visitors today?”

  “He never has visitors on Thursday afternoons. He stays in the house by himself and writes his sermons. Or waits maybe for God to dictate them to him. And he didn’t tell his wife or his son or anybody else that today was going to be different.”

  “Was he alone in the house from lunchtime on?”

  “That’s what his wife says.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Around noon. But she left the house a lot earlier. She went to the church to do some errands, then she went out to the mall to do some Christmas shopping. That’s where she grabbed a bite herself.”

  “Leaving him to fix his own lunch in the house?”

  “That’s the arrangement they have on Thursdays.”

  “What about enemies?” I spoke up. “A lot of nuts get attracted to these fundamentalist preachers. And he told me himself, when I talked to him this morning, that he kept a gun in his house because people had threatened him.”

  “The only nut we know about who threatened him is your client, the Meyer kid. And he’s the nut who killed him.”

  He put a hand on Ann’s arm and another on mine, and moved us firmly towards the living room archway. But then, for the first time, I noticed something that made me stop short, in spite of his hand. “What’s going on up there?”

  Over the fireplace, where I was pointing, a small picture was hanging. But all you could see was the back of it, because its face was turned towards the wall.

  Wolkowicz went up to it and turned it around. It was a picture of Jesus in closeup, with a crown of thorns on his head, a beatific smile on his face, and a halo glittering above him.

  “Now why do you suppose—?” Wolkowicz said. “The killer felt guilty maybe? He didn’t want Our Lord looking down at him while he committed murder?”

  “Roger Meyer is Jewish,” Ann said gently. “Jews don’t believe that Jesus is Our Lord.”

  Wolkowicz shot her a furious look, but he didn’t have anything to say.

  * * *

  It was almost eight-thirty before I got to Mom’s house. I had called her earlier, right after Ann gave me the news about the murder, to ask if I could drop by later. Mom said I could and she’d give me a bite to eat no matter how late I was.

  True to her word, she had dinner ready for me. I told her about the murder between mouthfuls of vegetable beef soup, and she asked me questions while I dug into the lamb chops and mashed potatoes. And the peas too. After all these years, Mom still won’t let me leave a dinner table until I’ve consumed my quota of green vegetables.

  “So tell me please,” she said, when I had finally got to the end of my story, “did he finish the sermon?”

  “What do you mean, Mom?”

  “Did the police find it anywhere, this sermon he’s supposed to have spent the whole afternoon writing?”

  “I just don’t know. I’ll ask the assistant DA.”

  “Also ask him to let you read it, so you can tell me what’s in it.”

  “Okay, but I doubt if he wrote the name of his killer in it or anything like that. What he wrote on the carpet with the crayon—that was his attempt to say who the killer was.”

  There were deep creases in Mom’s forehead. “Those words he wrote on the carpet—those are the things that the three wise kings brought to the baby Jesus, as a birthday present. In your opinion, how do they say who the killer is?”

  “Maybe he wanted to get across that the killer was a wise man of some kind? A professor maybe? Somebody who works at Mesa Grande College?”

  “Why not write his name? It would be quicker and easier, especially for a man who’s bleeding to death from a gunshot.”

  “Maybe there were three murderers, and he didn’t have time to write all their names. Or maybe the murderer was in disguise, with a long white beard, looking like one of the wise men—” I broke off, all too aware of the feebleness of my speculations.

  “So do you want some dessert?” Mom said. “I’ve got something nice for you, I made it special. I’ll give it to you as soon as you finish your peas.”

  I obeyed orders, then Mom whisked away my plate and brought in the dessert, one of her strawberry shortcakes. She doesn’t buy them from the bakery either, she creates them herself from sc
ratch. She brought coffee along with it, strong, black and hot, just the way I like it. All through my childhood I had been smelling Mom’s coffee and yearning for it, but it was only on my fifteenth birthday that she finally allowed me to taste it—bringing a cup to my place at the head of the table, right after I blew out the candles on my birthday cake.

  I enjoyed this treat just as much now, years later. But I noticed that Mom wasn’t looking as pleased as she usually looks when I’m wolfing down her food.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

  Shaking her head, she answered, “It’s only that I’ve got a funny feeling about this murder of yours.”

  “What feeling, Mom?”

  “I’m smelling something in it—behind it, underneath it, who knows where? I’m smelling—what’s the word? What do you call somebody that has an idea and believes in it so strong he’ll do anything for it, including he don’t care how many people get hurt or even killed for it?”

  “A fanatic.”

  “Fanatic, that’s it. Somewhere behind all this business with the Christmas lights and the real estate deals and the three wise kings, I’m smelling a fanatic. They’re the only type people that scare me.”

  “Robbers and murderers don’t scare you?”

  “Not the ones that do it for ordinary everyday reasons. Like they’re greedy for money, or they’re jealous because they lost their girlfriend, or they’re mad at somebody for calling them a dirty name. I don’t like such people, I wouldn’t invite them into my house, I’d be upset if somebody in my family married one of them. But they don’t scare me, because the reasons they do things are human beings’ reasons.”

  “Fanatics are human beings too.”

  “They don’t act human. A little greed, a little lust, a little anger, that’s all I’m asking from them. But for them it’s strictly, what do they call it, idealism. It’s some cause that’s going to make the world a perfect place to live in, some idea that’s above such minor feelings like lust and greed and anger. For them it’s no problem to kill somebody or rob somebody, because they’re right, they know they’re right, and anything you do for what’s right has got to be right also.”