"Like a disease,” she said. “Like Lea had been born with a weak blood vessel or a bad heart."
"That's right."
She smiled but the smile turned into a grimace. Then the crying began. But that was okay. She needed to cry. She'd been so scared, confused, and guilty that she hadn't taken the time to grieve for her daughter. I held her a moment. Then I kissed the top of her head and left her to her grieving.
Three days later, five one-hundred-dollar bills came in the mail. I threw away Cheryl's note and stuffed the cash into my wallet. Money spends no matter where it comes from or how much grief is involved in its making.
But I couldn't sleep. I spent my days chasing bail skips, working security at a couple of car shows, and following cheating spouses, wasted my nights drinking in places where I was a stranger or pacing my apartment while ESPN droned in the background. Then three weeks and two days after I'd paid my last visit to the Refugee, I woke early and skimmed the Commercial Appeal while I sipped my coffee. I snapped awake when I reached the Metro section. LaRae Rose, a twenty-year-old education major at the University of Memphis, had stuck a .22 automatic in her mouth and pulled the trigger. She hadn't left a note, but police were certain it was a suicide because she'd been suffering from depression and had made a last, desperate call to a local suicide hotline. I made a phone call of my own and got a couple of answers. Then I left my apartment, telling myself that it had to be Freddy McFarland and that when I did more checking, the sick hunch I felt in my gut would be proved wrong.
* * * *
I was waiting in her apartment when she got home. She closed the door behind her, spotted my form in her living room rocking chair, her Siamese cat in my lap, and squealed in surprise. Then her eyes adjusted to the shadows. She dropped her keys on a table by the door and gave me a shaky smile.
"I think I said call if you want, not break into my apartment."
I shoved the cat from my lap, stood up, and crossed to the window. “You have a beautiful view,” I said. “That's the Pyramid over there isn't it?"
"Jesus, Charlie. You almost gave me a heart attack and you want to talk about my view?"
I turned to face her. “I want you to tell me."
"Tell you?"
"What it was you said to Lea Washburn to make sure she committed suicide. Was it the same thing you said to the girl who shot herself last night?"
She wiped her lips on the back of her hand. “I have no idea what you're talking about."
"I spent the day at the library. I tracked twenty-three suicides in the last two years. Twenty-one of them called your hotline."
"That doesn't mean anything."
"I borrowed a Memphis Light, Gas, and Water uniform and ID from a friend and stopped by the Foundation while you were out. It took me awhile to find the fuse box. Then I looked in your private bathroom."
"And?"
"Nearly all the fuses in the box are rusted except for one, the one that powers your interior lights and recorders. No rust. It looks as if it's been taken out and put back in quite a lot over the years. The power goes off and it's only natural that you'd be the one to check the fuse since the box is in the bathroom right behind your desk. I talked to a few of your volunteers and then checked with MLGW. The only time the power seems to go off in your building is when you're on the phone with a caller who ends up committing suicide."
She rolled her eyes. “And you've made this connection because of rust on fuses?"
"The thing is, when you take fuses in and out, they tend to blow. I'm sure if I checked around at the neighborhood hardware stores I'd find someone who remembered you buying quite a few of them. Not many places have fuse boxes anymore. Fire hazards. Someone will remember."
"So what?"
"I did a little ransacking through your tapes. Out of the eighteen suicides that you personally talked with, fourteen have tapes that are interrupted halfway through the recording and the logs coincide with your calls to MLGW. You thought you were covering your tracks, but it's too neat and far too convenient."
"You're crazy, Charlie. I'd appreciate it if you'd get out of my apartment now."
"You catch people at their lowest moments and convince them to take their lives. I'm not sure I ever believed in evil. Not until now."
Her face flushed and her lips tightened across her teeth in a slash. “You don't know anything, Charlie. You've got no right....” Her voice broke and then she took a deep breath to regain her composure. “You just don't know."
"The night we met you said you sometimes resented the people you were trying to help. That made sense. But you don't resent them. You hate them."
"Because they're vicious,” she said quietly. “They're selfish and controlling and don't give a damn about anyone but themselves. You don't know, Charlie. You didn't live with my mother. She used the threat of suicide like a whip against my father and brother and me. If we did something she didn't like, she'd rage about how her life was hopeless and no one loved her. Then she'd take half a bottle of pills, wait ten minutes, and send me to get help. My whole life she did that to me. Christ, she must have ‘tried’ to kill herself a dozen times."
"Then she succeeded."
"Because I helped her. Because I locked the door and held her hand until it was too late to get help."
"And your brother?"
"Yes."
"Your daughter too."
Her eyes flashed. “Goddamn you, no. I didn't even know that Sarah was thinking about ... or depressed ... I didn't know.” She took another deep breath. “I help people. Don't you understand that? They don't want to live so I help them die in the only way I know how."
"You help people? Do you have any idea how many families you've destroyed, how many people you've shattered?"
"I'm a surgeon, Charlie. Living with someone who's suicidal is like having cancer. Sometimes malignant tumors have to be removed. Yes, it's painful, traumatizing, and people grieve for what they've lost, but in the end it's necessary to cut out the cancer so they can move on with their lives."
I was as weary as I could ever remember being in my life. “I shouldn't have called you evil, Sandy. You're not a monster. You're just a sick and sad woman."
"Go away, Charlie. I've had a long day, and you're wasting my time. You can't prove anything, and we both know it."
In an hour-long television drama, this would be the moment the police burst through the door or I pulled a mini tape recorder from my pocket to show her that her confession had been caught on tape. But the cops weren't outside, and I didn't have anything on tape. And it wouldn't have mattered anyway. She could have just claimed that she was playing along, telling the maniac who'd broken into her apartment what he wanted to hear because she was afraid. There wasn't a judge in America foolish enough to admit a recording like that into evidence. But that didn't matter either because no prosecutor would even attempt to take this case to trial. There was no physical evidence, no real motive that a jury could understand, and the “smoking gun” was an absence of rust on a fuse. Any cop who submitted the case to the D.A.'s office for prosecution would either be busted back to street patrol or sent for a psychiatric evaluation. Sandy McAllister was a serial killer who killed with words, a murderer whose victims wanted to die. A half-bright defense lawyer fresh out of a cow-college law school could get the case thrown out before a jury heard the first witness.
"You're right,” I said.
She smiled more in certainty than triumph. “Then go home, Charlie, go to bed or go to hell or go to a bar."
"You're right about the cops, but it doesn't matter. Your life is over, Sandy. I'm going to make sure of that."
"You're not a murderer, Charlie."
I knew what I was going to do. I didn't want to do it, didn't want to wake up every morning and look at my face in the mirror and know what I'd done. But I didn't see any other choice. She was sick, and she'd hurt far too many people.
"I have a friend, a writer for the Commercial Appeal who specializes
in exposes. He'll love this story and he'll run with it. Within two weeks everyone in Memphis will know what you are and what you've done. How many people do you think will donate money to you then? How many volunteers will stick around?"
She licked her lips. “They wouldn't print it. I'll sue for libel."
"No, you won't. You can't afford the legal bills, and even if you could, you wouldn't because everything you've done would be under a microscope, and you couldn't hide what you are any longer."
Her eyes flared with anger. “You're a bastard."
"It's over, Sandy. Everything's over.” I cleared my throat, took a deep breath, and forced myself to go on. “It's all been about control, hasn't it? Your mother took it away from you by threatening to kill herself, so you took it back by helping her. And you've been taking control back from other people, the ones you thought were serious and who you couldn't save. You did it because you've been one step away from swallowing pills or pulling that trigger your whole life. And we both know it."
Her jaw set, her teeth gritted. For a second, I thought that she was going to come at me and come at me hard, but then her shoulders sagged and the mask of her face crumbled. She held a hand up as if she were trying to ward off an apparition.
"You have to stop, Sandy. You can't sacrifice any more people."
She turned to face the window. “Leave me alone. Please, just leave me alone."
"Keep staring out there, Sandy. Keep looking hard because it's a long, long way down."
Then I left and closed the door behind me.
* * * *
Three days later, her suicide made the paper. At one o'clock in the morning, Sandy McAllister had finished a bottle of wine, put on a designer dress that she'd purchased the day before, and leapt from her living room window. When I read the article, I didn't cry but I didn't celebrate either. In fact, I didn't feel much of anything but ashamed and numb. I told myself that I hadn't pushed her. I gave myself long pep talks about justice and the greater good and how many other people like Lea she might have helped to kill. I swore that I'd had no other choice. Then I realized that trying to justify the past is as big a fool's errand as trying to reclaim it, and I stopped telling myself anything at all.
In the end, I went back to the Refugee. It was the closest thing I had to a home and when you're beat up and exhausted, you always go home.
I was three beers into my homecoming before Cheryl climbed onto the barstool beside me. She kissed my cheek and tipped her beer bottle in my direction.
"I'm getting better,” she said. “It isn't easy, but I am."
"Are you?"
"Not really,” she said. “But I figured that's what you wanted to hear."
I smiled and lifted my own beer. “That's what I want to hear."
"I'm getting better,” she said.
"I'm glad to hear it."
Then she slipped away and left me alone. But that was okay. That was where I wanted to be—the only place I'd felt comfortable in a long, long time.
©2009 by Tim L. Williams
[Back to Table of Contents]
Fiction: FOXED by Peter Turnbull
Just as this issue goes on sale a new Hennessey and Yellich novel by Peter Turnbull, Informed Consent (Severn House Publishers), will also be released. The series, says Booklist, “has a pair of protagonists who can play in the same league as any of Britain's top cop duos ... Recommend this ... to fans of John Harvey and Ian Rankin.” EQMM will have more tales of Hennessey and Yellich later this year.
MONDAY
The man was about thirty years old; the woman, thought George Hennessey, was approximately the same age, perhaps a little younger. Both were slender, both athletic-looking, and they lay fully clothed side by side in the meadow, among the buttercups. Hennessey pondered their clothing. Both wore good-quality designer wear: She had a blouse and skirt and crocodile-skin shoes; he wore a safari jacket over a blue T-shirt and white trousers. Both had expensive wrist watches. She wore a wedding ring and an engagement ring, he wore a wedding ring only. And they looked like each other; in their feminine and masculine way, they looked similar, same balanced face. Hennessey could see the basis for mutual attraction: If they looked at each other they'd see the opposite-sex version of themselves. He took off his straw hat and brushed a troublesome fly from his face. He glanced around him: meadows, woods, and fields in every direction and above, a vast, near cloudless sky, scarred, it seemed to him, by the condensation trail of a high-flying airliner. KLM or Lufthansa, probably, flying westwards from continental Europe to North America. Then, nearer at hand, the blue-and-white police tape suspended from four metal posts which had been driven into the rock-hard soil, for this was mid June and the Vale of York baked under a relentless sun.
Dr. Louise D'Acre stood and glanced at Hennessey. “Well, all I can do is confirm Dr. Mann's finding. Life is extinct. There is no obvious cause of death, not that I can see. They look as though they are sleeping, no putrefaction, just the hint of rigor, but they are definitely sleeping their final sleep. If you have done here, they can be removed to the York City Hospital for the postmortem.” Dr. D'Acre was a slim woman in her forties, close-cropped hair, a trace of lipstick, but very, very feminine. She held a momentary eye contact with George Hennessey and then turned away.
"Yellich.” Hennessey turned to his sergeant. “Have we? Finished here, photographs, fingerprints?"
"Yes, all done and dusted. Still to sweep the field, though."
"Of course.” Hennessey turned to Louise D'Acre. “All done."
"Good. I'll have the bodies removed, then.” She placed a rectal thermometer inside her black bag. “As soon as they've been identified, I'll see what I can find."
"Identification won't be a problem."
"You think so?"
"Two people, young, wealthy, both married, probably to each other ... they'll be socially integrated and easily missed. It's the down-and-outs, estranged from any kin, that take awhile to be identified."
"I can imagine."
"Nothing so useful as a handbag or a wallet to point us in the right direction. Strange, really. If they had been robbed, their watches would have gone."
"There's definitely the hand of another here, though.” Louise D'Acre spoke quietly. “What I can tell you is that they died at the same time, possibly within a few seconds of each other, as if in a suicide pact, but with such a pact, we would expect to see some evidence of suicide, a bottle of pills, a firearm. Death came from without, most definitely, by which I mean they didn't die of natural causes. Two people, especially in the prime of life, do not die from natural causes at the same time in the same immediate, side-by-side proximity of each other. They just don't. But I'll get there.” She smiled and nodded and walked away across the meadow of green grass, ankle-high buttercups, and the occasional fluttering blue butterfly, to the road where her distinctive motorcar was parked beside a black, windowless mortuary van.
* * * *
Wealth. It was the one word which spoke loudly to Hennessey. He'd used it in talking to Dr. D'Acre earlier that morning and now, examining the clothes, he used it again. “There's money here, Yellich. Real wealth."
"There is, isn't there?” Yellich examined the clothing. All seemed new, very little worn, even the hidden-from-view underclothing had a newness about it. His offhand comment about there being nothing useful like a name stitched to the collars earned him a disapproving glance from the chief inspector. “Well, I don't know about the female garments,” Yellich struggled to regain credibility, “but you know, sir, there's only one shop in the Vale of York that would sell gents’ clothing at this quality and price and that's Phillips and Tapely's, near the Minster."
"Ah ... I'm a Marks and Spencer man myself."
"So am I, sir, police officers’ salary being what it is, but you can't help the old envious eye glancing into their window as you walk past. Only the seriously wealthy folk go there, only the Yorkshire Life set. So I believe."
"Be out of my p
ocket as well, then. Right, Yellich, you've talked yourself into a job. You'll have to take photographs of the clothing, especially the designer label, and take the photographs to the shop...."
"Phillips and Tapely's?"
"Yes.... The actual clothing will have to go to the Forensic Science lab at Wetherby to be put under the microscope."
"Of course."
"Every contact leaves a trace, and often said trace is microscopic. I'll ask the advice of the female officers about the female garments, they might suggest a likely outlet."
* * * *
Yellich, being a native of York, knew the value of walking the medieval walls when in the city centre, quicker and more convenient than the twentieth-century pavements below. That day the walls were crowded with tourists, but it didn't stop his enjoyment of the walk—the railway station, the ancient roofs, the newer buildings blending in sensitively, and the Minster there, solid, dependable, a truly magnificent building in his opinion. Without it, there just wouldn't be a city. He stepped off the wall, as he had to at Lendal Bridge, walked up Museum Street and on into Drummon Place, and right at the Minster, where stood the half-timbered medieval building that was the premises of Phillips and Tapely's, Gentlemen's Outfitters since 1810. Yellich pulled open the door, a bell jangled, and he stepped into the cool, dark silence and, he found, somewhat sleepy atmosphere of the shop; with dull-coloured rather than light-coloured clothing on display, and wooden counters and drawers constructed with painstaking carpentry. A young man, sharply dressed, near snapped to attention as Yellich entered the shop. “Yes, sir, how can I help you?"
"Police.” Yellich showed his ID, and was amused by the crestfallen look on the assistant's face as he realised he wasn't going to sell anything, that this caller was not a customer. “I wonder if you can help me?"
"If I can, sir."
"I have some photographs here...” Yellich took the recently produced black-and-white and colour prints from a brown envelope and placed them on the counter. “Of clothing, as you see..."
"Yes.... We do sell clothing like this. I presume that's what you'd like to know?” Said with a smile, and Yellich began to warm to the young man. “The jacket particularly, and the shoes ... the label ‘Giovanni,’ an Italian manufacturer, very stylish, favoured by the younger gentlemen.... We are the only outlet for ‘Giovanni’ in the north of England."
EQMM, March-April 2009 Page 26
