A Murder of Crows

by K. J. Emrick

  Marla and Jeff had been together when they were still alive. Worse, they had been together before Darcy had kicked Jeff out of the house.

  A flood of emotions welled up inside of her and she nearly lost her hold on Marla’s spirit. How dare he! How dare he…suddenly the whole end of their marriage came into better focus. The way Jeff had treated her, the smug attitude that said he was getting something over on her. This was it.

  Or was there more?

  In the dark and swirling mists of her mind, Marla’s spirit stood there smirking at her. Darcy collected herself. The past was past. She had to let it go. Even if she had only just found out, Jeff was dead now, their marriage only a memory. She shouldn’t dwell on it. Marriage had obviously been the wrong choice for her, and that was all there was to it.

  She focused herself again through breathing techniques that her great aunt had shown her. Then she made herself meet Marla’s stare. Even if the woman’s ghost was doing everything she could to get out of this, Darcy had to hold on to her a little longer. She had something important still to ask her.

  “Marla. Who killed you?”

  She shook her head sadly. Then she pointed to Darcy’s hands. “Beware the crow.”

  With that, she twisted sideways in Darcy’s mind and slipped away.

  Darcy came up from her trance more quickly than she was used to. Marla had practically thrust her out, apparently thinking that her message was delivered, and that was that.

  “You could have been a little clearer,” Darcy mumbled, rubbing a hand over her face. She felt sweaty strands of hair sticking to her forehead and cheeks. Her back and legs hurt from sitting on the bathroom floor. How long had she been here?

  Looking up, she saw Jon smiling at her reassuringly. “Welcome back,” he said to her. “Learn anything useful?”

  She nodded, not really sure how to explain it. Then she became very suddenly aware of Jeff standing there, too, hovering over Jon’s shoulder. She glared at him square in his translucent face. He pursed his lips and nodded. Obviously, he knew what she had just seen.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to her, again.

  “Sorry isn’t good enough,” she snapped, reaching out to Jon to have him help her up.

  “Excuse me?” Jon asked her.

  “Not you, Jon,” she steadied herself on her feet, the feeling returning to her numb backside. “I was talking to Jeff.”

  “How are you talking to…oh. He’s still here, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. He keeps telling me that he’s sorry, and I don’t want to hear it.”

  Jeff’s specter moved back, fading through the bathroom wall and away.

  “What are you sorry for, Jeff? Huh?” Jon said angrily, turning around the room. “What did you do?”

  “Uh, he’s gone now,” she told him.

  “Oh. Well, what is he sorry for?” Jon asked her this time. “Besides the obvious, I mean. What did you see in your vision?”

  Reluctantly, she told him everything. Marla using the same insults that Jeff used to use, then seeing them together in their bedroom.

  “Well,” Jon said after a moment, “I guess we’ll need to burn that mattress when we get home.”

  She couldn’t agree more. “I can’t believe I ever married him. If I had it to do all over again, I never would have married him.”

  Jon looked at her in a funny way. She realized he was thinking about what that meant for them and she knew she should reassure him that nothing would ever change her feelings about him, but the shock of what Jeff had done to her was still too fresh. She knew she would never want to get married again.

  Rather than say that to him and make it worse, she went back to talking about her vision. “I asked Marla who killed her. She said the same thing that Jeff had said to me. She said to beware the crow, and then she pointed to my hands…”

  Darcy looked down at her hands, realizing the coin that she had taken from Marla’s bag was still in her left palm. A good luck piece with a four-leaf clover on this one side.

  She turned it over in her hand. On the reverse side was a depiction of a crow.

  Chapter Seven

  She skipped the conference that day, staying in the hotel room while Jon went back to the Ryansburg Police Department to see if there was anything new on the case. Truth be told, Darcy thought he just wanted some space from her right now, after what she had said in the bathroom to him. She felt bad. She loved Jon more than she had ever loved anyone in her life. It wasn’t his fault what Jeff had done.

  Her feelings weren’t her fault, either. That didn’t make them any less real.

  She knew Jeff was still here, somewhere, his spirit unwilling or unable to leave. Well. He could say sorry all he wanted. He would never be able to fix what he had done.

  Laying on her stomach across the bed, she spent the rest of the morning reading through her aunt’s book. She could hear Millie’s voice in every sentence. The way she wrote was exactly how Darcy remembered her talking to people. There was humor and wit and good advice on every page.

  A lot of it was stuff that her aunt had told her personally when Darcy had been still young. Trust in your gift. Trust in yourself. Know that you are special because very few people can reach out to the other side or know things before they happen or feel when something is wrong. She read some paragraphs two or three times. It was almost like having a quiet conversation with Millie again.

  There were chapters with tips for the reader on using your gift, too. Most of them were very basic. A few towards the end were more advanced. Two of them were ones Darcy wasn’t even familiar with. She read them through very carefully, committing them to memory. Her aunt had a lot to teach her. Even after her death.

  A little after noon Jon returned. Darcy had gotten him a second key card from the front desk. He came in now juggling two plastic bags in one hand and pushing the door open with his back. His smile was very apologetic and she realized he felt like he’d done something wrong. She wondered if there was anything she could say to fix it.

  “I brought us some Chinese for lunch,” he told her. “I figured after your communication this morning that you’d be hungry.”

  “I am, thank you.” She sat up cross legged on the bed. “That smells wonderful. Did the police here have anything new?”

  “I spoke with Officer Phillips. Nice guy. Good cop, from what I can see. They found the man you described from the bar and they have an address for him. We should know sometime this afternoon if they were able to pick him up.”

  Darcy nodded. Jon used a plastic spoon to put some of the rice and chicken balls on paper plates for each of them. She took hers, and they ate in silence for a while. It wasn’t the same comfortable silence that they usually shared between them. This was just the opposite.

  After a few minutes Jon cleared his throat. “So. Where do you think Marla got that coin with the crow on it?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered quickly, eager to have anything to talk about. “It’s too much of a coincidence that both Jeff and Marla’s ghosts warned us about a crow and then one shows up on that coin in her stuff. It must have something to do with her death.”

  “I agree. Maybe we can do an online search for that particular design, or maybe Officer Phillips would recognize it? It might be something local, a store logo or something. If the killer is from Ryansburg, that might be the connection. Maybe I should take it with me when I go back.”

  “You? I think you mean when we go back. I’m coming with you.”

  Jon smiled at her, chewing his food. “That’s what I thought you’d say. That’s the Darcy I know. And love.”

  For a minute, everything was back to the way it always was between them. Then Jon’s cell phone rang. He looked at the screen, then set his plate of food aside. “It’s Officer Phillips,” he told Darcy.

  ***

  The Ryansburg Police Department was a big, square brick building in the middle of one of the busier downtown streets, situated across from the courthouse a
nd city hall. Darcy was surprised by the number of officers walking around and the black and white patrol cars coming and going. Jon didn’t even bat an eyelash as they walked up the front steps.

  “Do you miss it?” Darcy asked him.

  “Miss it?” he asked her, holding the front door open for her. “What do you mean?”

  “You worked at a big police department before you came to Misty Hollow. Our small town police force must be boring to you after all this.”

  He laughed at that. “To tell you the truth, Darcy, I’ve investigated more homicides since I met you than I did in my entire career before Misty Hollow.”

  She could tell he was teasing. When he reached out to hold her hand, she gently squeezed back. She may have brought chaos to his life, but he enjoyed it whether he wanted to admit it or not.

  Inside the department a junior officer showed them to a back interview area where Officer Phillips was waiting for them. He was wearing his long-sleeved uniform just like she’d seen him in before. She figured he must be pretty warm wearing that on a day like today.

  He smiled at them and nodded to Darcy. “Nice to see you both again. Jon, we’ve got the man in the interview room. Riley Mason is his name. Hasn’t been very talkative but he hasn’t asked for a lawyer either. So. You up to helping me with the interrogation?”

  “Definitely. Thanks for including me.”

  “Before you do that,” Darcy interrupted, “can you look at this?”

  She pulled the good luck coin from her pocket and handed it over to Officer Phillips. He held it up, looking closely at it, turning it over, then over again. He handed it back to Darcy with a little shrug. “No, sorry. I don’t recognize it. Is it important?”

  “Marla had it in her things,” Darcy said honestly. “I thought it might mean something.”

  “It might, I guess. Keep it. If I see anything like that I’ll let you know. So Jon, you ready?”

  She put the coin back in her pocket, disappointed. It was supposed to be the key to this puzzle, or at least part of it, and now it looked like it was nothing more than a keepsake from the bottom of a dead woman’s bag.

  Jon told Darcy to wait there, and then he and Officer Phillips disappeared around the corner. She found a row of green plastic chairs in the hallway and took a seat to wait. Several people, uniformed officers and others, walked by her like she wasn’t even there. They were mostly wearing short sleeved shirts for a uniform. It looked much more comfortable than the long sleeved version Officer Phillips was wearing. She started tapping her feet and was just about to check her watch when Jon came back.

  “That was fast,” she said to him.

  “Short interview.” His face was screwed up in thought. “Riley Mason denies knowing anything about how Marla died. Phillips showed him a photo of her, and he does admit that they danced at the bar, even fooled around a little, but he says that she left without him. There was some other guy with her, he says.”

  Darcy stood up. “Who? Did he know who it was?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. He never got a good look at the guy. Phillips pressed him on it pretty hard, but there was nothing there. He says Riley left with Marla, and that everything after that is just paperwork. Phillips is sure it was him.”

  She tilted her head, trying to read his face. “You don’t think so, do you?”

  “I didn’t get that from him. He didn’t seem like he was being dishonest when he said he didn’t know anything about it.”

  “So what are we going to do now?”

  Jon shrugged. “It’s not my case. It’s not even my jurisdiction. If the Ryansburg Police are comfortable making an arrest on this guy then it’s not my place to say anything.”

  “But you don’t think it’s the right guy.”

  He looked directly at her then. “I know it’s not.”

  “Then what would you do?” Darcy smiled at him. “Tell me what you would do to find the real killer.”

  It was obvious that he’d already thought about it. “I think we need to go back to that bar. You said there was a second man, right? The one with the port wine birthmark on his face?”

  Darcy nodded.

  “Then let’s go find him.”

  ***

  Darcy remembered the way back to the bar easily enough. This early in the afternoon the place was open, but hardly anyone was there. The music was turned off, the rotating lights were stopped still, and the bartender was wiping down the long black bar.

  Jon and Darcy went up to the bar and sat down on stools. The bartender saw them and held up a meaty finger, asking them to wait. He was a heavily muscled man with a patchwork of tattoos down his bare right arm. His black sleeveless shirt matched the color of his pants and the chains around his neck made him look like something of a thug.

  When he came over he tossed his cleaning rag over his shoulder and rubbed his hands together. “What can I get you two?”

  “Information,” Jon said, displaying the badge in his wallet.

  The bartender sighed in a long-suffering way. “You lot been round here all day. Don’t know anything more than what I told you already. Gave you the bloke’s name. What more you want?”

  “That was another officer,” Jon pointed out. Darcy did her best to keep her face expressionless. Jon wasn’t exactly lying to this guy. He was a police officer. He was looking into the case of Marla’s death. He just wasn’t doing it in any kind of official capacity. If this man told them to leave, they’d have no choice but to go.

  “Know it was another officer,” the bartender said with a curt nod. “Don’t mean the answers to the questions will change just because you’re asking them again. I don’t know anything more.”

  “What about the other man?” Darcy asked quickly. “The one with the port wine stain on his face?”

  The bartender raised an eyebrow. “You mean Finn?”

  Darcy exchanged a look with Jon. Could it really be that easy?

  “Who is Finn?” Jon asked.

  The bartender nodded his head off toward the opposite corner of the room. Past the dancefloor there was a cluster of small round tables. At one of them, in the shadows, sat the dark haired man with the port wine stain that Darcy had seen the night Marla was killed.

  Jon and Darcy went and sat down at the table with the man. He looked up, his eyebrows lowering, the birthmark on his left cheek crinkling. He had been poring over some paperwork. Now he tossed his pen down and looked from one of them to the other. “Who are you?”

  “Detective Tinker,” Jon said. “I understand you were here the night that Marla Benson was killed.”

  “Sure I was. I’m here every night. I own the place.”

  Darcy blinked. “You’re the owner?”

  “Yup. I bought out the previous owner seven years ago. Brad Finn.” He held out his hand to her, then to Jon. “Good to meet you. Detective I want to help in any way I can. What can I do for you?”

  ***

  In a back room of the bar, Brad showed them the recording device with its attached monitor. “I know Riley. We’re friends, actually. There’s no way he hurt that woman. I told the last guy the same exact thing.”

  “That’s not what the investigating officer thinks,” Jon told him.

  Still rewinding the images on the screen Brad said, “I thought you were investigating this?”

  “I am,” Jon said. “But someone else is the primary officer.”

  Brad nodded. “I see. Well, whatever. I don’t care who sees this as long as someone does. The officer who was here earlier didn’t even want to look at it.”

  Jon looked at Darcy behind Brad’s back, eyebrows raised. Officer Phillips hadn’t looked at the security footage? “He said the security camera showed Riley leaving with Marla.”

  “See for yourself.” Brad pushed his chair back so Jon and Darcy could crowd in closer to the screen.

  The image had been rewound to one-thirty yesterday morning. They could see multiple angles of the bar room, and Darcy pointed out Marl
a dancing with Riley on the dance floor. They watched them dancing, very closely, through a couple of songs. A lot closer than Darcy would have been comfortable dancing with someone she had just met, that was sure. Then suddenly Marla looked at someone off camera, and with a brush of her hand across Riley’s face she walked away.

  “Riley looks upset,” Jon said. “That’s always a good motive for murder.”

  “Keep watching,” Brad said.

  They did. What they saw was just a glimpse of Marla leaving the bar with a man not ten minutes later. All they could see from any angle, though, was one of the man’s arms. Brad pointed to the screen where Riley went back over to the bar and sat down. Brad was there with him, clapping him on the back, laughing about how he’d almost made it with the pretty redhead.

  Brad leaned in to press the fast forward button. The timestamp in the corner of the screen advanced, and the two men sat at the bar well past closing. At four in the morning, they left together.

  “I took him home,” Brad explained. “We walked. Half an hour later, I left him at his apartment steps.”

  Darcy stared at the screen. “Jon, how could this be? Officer Phillips said that Riley left with Marla.”

  “Maybe he misspoke,” Jon suggested. “And maybe Marla was killed after four thirty. I didn’t think to ask what the time of death was.”

  “I’m telling you that Riley had nothing to do with it.” Brad’s voice had gotten angry. “Find the guy she actually left with. Find that man, and you’ll find her killer, I’d bet.”

  “So how do we know,” Jon said, “that you didn’t kill her yourself? If the time of death is after four thirty, you don’t exactly have an alibi yourself, do you?”

  “Are you insane?” Brad practically yelled. “Why in God’s name would I kill the woman? I didn’t even know her.”

  “You know she turned your friend down,” Jon reasoned. “Maybe you saw her back here at the bar when you came back. Or when you were leaving, for that matter. Maybe there was an argument and things got out of hand?”

  Brad slammed a hand down on the desk holding the computer equipment. “And maybe you should just leave my bar!”