Life Is Short and Then You Die_First Encounters With Murder From Mystery Writers of America

by Kelley Armstrong

  I suspected. I suspected Birdy had fallen away from me and was falling for Frank.

  “An impossible relationship,” Birdy said. “A moth to his indifferent flame … We had a pact.”

  “What kind of pact?”

  “We were going to kill Murray together.”

  A mother walked by pushing a baby carriage. He waited until she was out of hearing.

  “We argued for several weeks about how to do it. I mean, how do you kill someone and not get caught?”

  He looked at me as though I might provide him with an answer.

  “How many weeks?”

  “Huh?”

  “How long did you and Frank have this private pact?”

  “About two months.”

  I felt more hurt in my gut; I hadn’t known about it. Not a thing. My two closest friends.

  He continued. “We talked about cutting the brake line in Murray’s car, poisoning him, or setting fire to his house. And then Frank decided he’d had enough talking. Two weeks ago, he went out and bought a rifle at a gun fair.”

  “He was going to shoot him?”

  Birdy nodded. “Frank had a plan, which in theory might have worked.”

  “What was it?”

  “Hide the murder.”

  Birdy was staring across at the tops of the school buildings.

  “How do you mean hide the murder?”

  Tears welled in Birdy’s eyes. “If you kill one person, then everything is specific. The police will ask: What was the specific reason someone specific killed that specific person?”

  He took his eyes from the school and looked at me.

  “If you kill several people at once, seemingly at random, then no one thinks about specifics.”

  I had begun to guess what he was telling me. I could feel my stomach tightening.

  “Frank said he could hide Murray’s murder in that randomness.”

  “He was going to—” I didn’t know how to say it. “A shooting? A massacre? At the school?”

  Birdy nodded. “He was going to walk into the gymnasium with his rifle while Murray was teaching PE class. He was going to strafe everyone in the room with bullets, making sure that Murray got it first.”

  I thought I was going to be sick again.

  Birdy stood up. He indicated for me to do so, too. Twenty yards away, at the intersection of the cycle pathways, stood a row of bicycle lockers, those large, metal, vault-like boxes you could feed in a few coins and safely lock your bike inside for the day. He led me over to them.

  Birdy looked around. There was no one. He pulled out a latex glove from his pocket and put it on. He took out a key. He opened the end locker’s metal door.

  There was no bicycle. Inside was stashed a bundle of clothing: workman’s overalls, hard hat, boots, and eyesight protection goggles. Next to it sat two boxes: a small fat one, and an oblong one that, according to its label and markings, held a leaf blower.

  Birdy reached in and lifted the lid of the oblong box. Inside lay a rifle. It looked like something a soldier might head onto a battlefield with.

  Birdy whispered: “It’s a semiautomatic assault rifle.”

  “Shit.”

  He dropped the lid.

  “The other box contains a dozen clips of ammunition. Frank was going to do it on Friday morning last week.”

  I could barely breathe. “How did he think he’d get away with it?”

  “Invisibility.”

  Birdy closed and locked the bicycle locker. He peeled off the glove and hid it back in his pocket.

  “There are no security cameras here at the rear of the bus depot.”

  I looked. I couldn’t see any.

  “Frank worked out a route from this locker, through the school, and out the other side, a long, narrow, blind spot, where no public or school security cameras are pointed at.”

  We walked away from the bicycle locker, toward the school; one of the cycle paths led into it.

  Birdy spoke wearily. “Disguised as a workman, Frank was going to walk along the blind spot, walk into the gymnasium, take the rifle out of the box, and open fire.” He shook his head. “It would have been a slaughterhouse.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “He’d drop the rifle in the gymnasium, and in the panic and chaos that would rip through the school, he’d continue walking along the blind spot. He’d walk out of the grounds, he’d lose the disguise, and then he’d vanish into randomness.”

  We stopped at the school gate.

  “I told Frank no. I told him I wanted out. I said it was insane, he couldn’t do it; he couldn’t kill innocent people.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he’d do it alone.” Birdy looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot and wet with tears. “And you know he would have.”

  I did.

  “He thought taking you out to Lake Trentini on Thursday night was to bring you in on the plan. I took you out there because you’re the only person I trust.”

  “You shouldn’t have kept it a secret from me.”

  He shrugged. “You do stupid things like that when you think you’re in love with someone.”

  Word.

  * * *

  Mr. Murray had an Olympic gold medal. He’d won it three decades ago. Every now and then, he’d bring it into school. We’d all want to hold it. We’d all want to hang it around our necks and, just for a moment, feel like we were the best in the world. Mr. Murray could teach you how to run and how to win, and you trusted him. Birdy, Frank, and me had, and we could run fast. He’d taught us how.

  We watched him now.

  Murray was building the trust of another runner.

  We were seated in the bleachers on the other side of the school stadium.

  The track is addictive. It was the late afternoon, Sunday, and Murray was teaching a kid how to start, how to come out of the starting blocks like a jackrabbit. He had his hand on the kid’s backside. He was crouched alongside, whispering in his ear.

  There are boundaries between you and me, us and others; between you and me and everyone we know. For Mr. Murray, the boundaries were made of chalk. They meant nothing.

  “Frank had a lot of hate,” Birdy said.

  The kid shot out of the starting blocks. He ran a few meters and then stopped. He turned and walked back to Murray, who put his arm around his shoulders and spoke to him. We couldn’t hear the words, but it was no doubt a whisper, a creeping confidence between runner and coach.

  “We all have our demons, one or two. Frank had a whole circus of them. I had to stop him, Dee. You know that.”

  The kid tried a couple more starts, and each time he got a little better, a little faster. He was a quick learner. He listened to his coach.

  “What did you do with the gun?” I asked. “The gun you shot Frank with.”

  “It’s in the bicycle locker. Why?”

  “I’ll kill him.”

  Birdy shook his head. “I’m not going through that again.”

  “I’ll kill him for Frank. I’ll kill him for all of us. Put the gun in my hand. I’ll do it right now.”

  Birdy was wide-eyed. “Out here? In the open? Are you serious?”

  “Get the gun.”

  “The stadium is probably full of security cameras.”

  “So what?”

  He stared at me. He finally let out the breath he’d been holding. I think he understood.

  He went to get the gun.

  * * *

  When you run a race, you focus on who is in front of you. You focus on the track ahead, and you focus on the finish line. You visualize yourself crossing it first, and you throw every ounce of your energy and soul into seeing that happen. Mr. Murray taught us that.

  His training with the kid finished. The kid picked up his bag and headed to the tunnel at the base of the grandstand; a quick shower and then go home. He waved goodbye to Murray as he left.

  Murray took out his phone. It looked like he was checking it for messages. M
ore whispering.

  Birdy came back.

  I held the gun in my hand.

  Murray put his phone into his back pocket. He collected up the blocks and dropped them into a bag.

  I walked out onto the track.

  Birdy walked out alongside me.

  “We could have stopped Frank,” I said to him.

  Murray picked up his clipboard and a bottle of water.

  “We could have told someone. He could have been stopped before anything had happened. But then everything would have come out, wouldn’t it have?”

  I walked toward Murray, with my hand behind my back holding the gun.

  I focused on the finish.

  Murray looked up. He squinted. There was recognition in his face. He smiled.

  I stopped ten feet from him.

  I raised my hand.

  The other one. The empty one.

  I aimed my index and forefinger at his forehead.

  He stopped smiling. In that finish line freeze-frame moment, he knew.

  “I’m fucking tired of this game,” I said.

  Birdy and I went and telephoned the police.

  Those things we don’t talk about, that no one around here talked about … We’re going to make sure everyone has to talk about them.

  ENEMY LINES

  By Caleb Roehrig

  Two years ago, in the spring of 1940, Gerhard Volz put a bullet through my father’s head. Now, if my aunt Marguerite got her way, I might have the chance to repay him.

  “The man deserves to die!” She slammed her fist down onto the small table, her glare stark beneath a single, bare bulb.

  “I don’t disagree.” My uncle exhaled wearily. “But that is not the mission.”

  “To hell with the mission!” Marguerite’s voice was sharp as a spike. Color bloomed in her cheeks, her eyes blazed, and she thrust her hand out at the cramped cellar around us—the maps, the Ally-issued radio, the earthen floor, and the wine racks in the gloom behind her. “This is my mission. The only one that matters. And after years of waiting for it, the opportunity is right here, right now! We’ll never get a chance like this again, Henri, you know we won’t.”

  Uncle Henri sagged. “Perhaps, perhaps not. But we—”

  “‘Perhaps not’? Think of what you’re saying. Think of who you’re saying it to!”

  Henri Barbier’s eyes flickered to me, and I did my best to appear calm. Inside, however, my guts were knotting together. Gerhard Volz. I was going to see him in the flesh—a man I’d loathed for so long the hatred felt grafted to my bones—and here, tonight, my aunt and uncle would decide what happened when I did.

  With an expression that muddled guilt and regret and annoyance, Henri tore his gaze away from me and turned back to my aunt. “I am thinking of Fernand, Margot. Believe it or not, I would very much like to see Colonel Volz in the ground with a French blade in his Nazi heart—and that goes for every jackbooted German on our soil. But what we’re asking of Fernand is already enormously dangerous, and his lack—”

  “Exactly,” Marguerite cut him off. “It’s already dangerous. And he’ll be under the same roof as the man who—”

  “His lack of experience,” Henri continued loudly, “means that the more we ask of him, the greater his chances are of failing.” Her jaw snapped shut at this, and her gray eyes slid to me with a mix of regret, guilt, and determination. Henri pressed on. “He is only fifteen years old, and we’re asking a tremendous amount of him. We’re already asking him to take a life!”

  Marguerite nodded precisely. “So, we ask him to take two.”

  “Margot—”

  “Can I say something?” I interrupted, and both of them finally gave me their full attention. “Gerhard Volz shot my father. He deserves to be killed.” My folded hands closing into fists, I added, “And I deserve to be the one who kills him.”

  A troubled exhalation escaped from Henri, while Marguerite’s lips curled into a cold, satisfied smile.

  * * *

  On May 10 of 1940, the Germans had invaded France. The battle lasted a scant six weeks, at the end of which our country was forced to surrender and agree to a terrible armistice that divided the nation into two halves: an Occupied Zone under German control, and a “Free” Zone—which was effectively under German control as well, for all the influence they held over the puppet government.

  I was thirteen when panzers first rolled through the streets of my hometown in what was now Occupied France, when explosions shook the walls and bullets etched scars into the stone of bridges and buildings. When my father—drunk and scared at a bar full of drunk and scared people doing their best to find solace in the midst of unrelenting terror—made an ugly remark about the invading Nazis. When a Nazi commander who happened to be seated nearby, availing himself of France’s hospitality during a short respite from murdering her citizens, took offense and shot my father point-blank through the forehead.

  That Nazi was so good at killing the French that once the Armistice was signed on June 22, and swastikas hung from Parisian flagpoles, he was promoted to the rank of colonel. My mother had passed when I was six, and so, upon the death of my father, I had been claimed by my nearest living relative: my father’s oldest sister, Marguerite Barbier.

  Together, we learned the identity of the man who had killed my father and her brother, and together we tracked his movements—using every possible source of information we could find—from Dijon to Dole to, now, Beaune, one hundred twenty-eight kilometers north of our village of Saint-Étienne-du-Bois in the Free Zone. For two years, my aunt and I had eased the burden of grief by dreaming countless gruesome deaths for Colonel Gerhard Volz.

  And now I would see him. At last.

  “May I say something?” Henri countered in the silence. “Aside from the satisfaction of revenge, what do you think will happen after you kill a Nazi colonel?”

  The question was rhetorical, and I didn’t answer.

  “They will retaliate. They will make indiscriminate arrests, they will unleash violence, they will hurt the innocent to set an example. And they will replace Volz. Cut off the head of the monster and more will spring up in its place, with sharper teeth and quicker anger.” It was my uncle’s turn to smash a fist on the table. “And if our connections in Beaune do not turn on us, they will die as well. The Maquis cannot afford to be reckless, to indulge in vengeance at the expense of pragmatism.”

  The Maquis—the Resistance. The French government had been forced to yield to the German military, but the French people would never wholly submit to tyranny. When surrender became inevitable, some soldiers escaped, disappearing into the hills and forests. Decentralized and anonymous, they staged organized attacks that damaged munitions and supplies, intercepted communiqués, and disrupted operations. Before long, they were joined by private citizens—people like the Barbiers, who were angry and determined and only willing to die if they did so fighting.

  My aunt and uncle were the de facto leaders of the Resistance group in our area of Burgundy, based in a village thirty kilometers south of the Demarcation Line—the boundary the Nazis had set up, partitioning France—where it ran through Chalon-sur-Saône. They’d forged papers and sabotaged radio installations, hijacked convoys and relayed sensitive intelligence to the Allied Forces. I knew that Aunt Marguerite had even killed two men while working undercover in the Occupied Zone. Once because it was him or her, and once because she needed to stop a soldier from sounding the alarm when her team had been spotted. But this was the first time I had ever been included in their plans. It was the first time they’d stopped treating me like a child and viewed me as a potential soldier in their covert actions against the Germans.

  Reaching for a bottle at the edge of the table, Henri poured three glasses of dark red wine and pushed one into my hands. “You are shrewd, Fernand. Clever. I’ve watched you, and I think you can do this job. But not if you allow yourself to be led by your emotions.”

  A silence fell around the table, so total it hu
rt my ears. Aunt Marguerite’s fingers tightened on the stem of her glass, but she pressed her lips together, deciding not to renew the argument.

  After a moment, I answered, “I won’t. I’ll carry out my mission as ordered.”

  Henri raised his glass to me. “To your health, then.”

  The flavors of earth and iron in the rich wine reminded me of blood.

  * * *

  One week later, after sunset, Aunt Marguerite and I left the village in the Barbiers’ old Citroën, the countryside a shifting black void.

  “Hiking through the woods at night won’t be easy,” she said.

  I shifted my jaw. “I know how to use a compass.”

  “You’ll be lucky if you can see three inches in front of your face.”

  “I have a good sense of direction.”

  My aunt laughed, a husky and unexpected sound that filled the automobile. “You’re like me, Fernand. Too much like me. More guts than brains. The Bougnol family curse.”

  “And Henri?”

  “Your uncle is … the reverse.” She huffed out a breath. “More brains than guts. He’s right, but he’s wrong, because he sees the odds before he sees what can truly be accomplished when you stop caring about them.” A stiff silence ticked by, and then, “What is your mission?”

  “Someone in the Maquis is feeding Gerhard Volz sensitive information during his periodic stays at the chateau of André Lagarde, a vintner and business owner in Garance. The kitchen boy under Lagarde’s chef will be sick for one week, during which time I am to take his place. I will spy on Volz, I will find out who visits with him, and when I know who the traitor to France is … they will die.”

  She waited a moment. “And then?”

  “And then,” I continued, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, “I will return home.”

  Another moment passed before she replied, “Good.” I’d repeated those exact words, in that order, for her and my uncle countless times over the past days. If she wanted to change the plan now that Henri was safely out of earshot, she had her chance; but instead, she surprised me. “I’m going to contradict something I already told you, Fernand. You must only kill your target if you can get away cleanly.”