EQMM, September-October 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The detective jotted notes, clearly disgusted with the entire matter, his anger over Windows's murder barely supressed.

  Before Mrs. Candles was hauled away, he told her, “Forget prison, lady. You just wait until you get to hell."

  Calmly, she replied, “There is no hell, no heaven, no God. If God existed, he would have let me have children. No, there is no afterlife. Just this one."

  The detective could only stare at her as she was taken away. He said, to himself more than to me, “How can somebody live like that? Without hope?"

  "Think about it, Detective. If there's no hope, then there's no grief, either."

  He stepped to the back door to peer outside, where the coroner covered Windows's body with a sheet. “I wouldn't mind doing with a little less grief."

  "That's what hope is for,” I said. “To ease the pain of grief."

  That thought didn't seem to be doing him any good.

  I said, “We found the Cosseli girl. That's something."

  He nodded, grim. “Yeah. Something."

  And he stepped out the back door to help wheel Windows's gurney to the black van.

  * * * *

  For at least one family in a modest home just south of Johnson Creek Boulevard, this Halloween would always be fondly remembered. As their daughter, missing for over a week and presumed dead, came home to their open arms, the family snuffed out that candle of hope shining in the window.

  I realized it isn't the candle that's the symbol of hope, or even the flame. It's the window, through which light can always shine.

  Copyright © 2009 Brian Muir

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  Department of First Stories: HISTORY ON THE BEDROOM WALL by Rebecca K. Jones and Josh Pachter

  Rebecca Jones, 23, is a second-year law student at the University of Arizona. Born in Germany and raised in Ohio, she went to high school at Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut and double-majored in history and psychology at Middlebury College. She comes by her love of crime fiction honestly: Her father, Josh Pachter, has contributed stories and translations to EQMM sincehis own Department of First Stories appearance in1968. He collaborated with Rebecca on this, her first, story.

  I'll never believe it was just a coincidence, not if I live to be forty. Somehow, I'm convinced, Ani knew.

  It was a quarter past seven on the last Saturday morning of fall semester. I was putting the finishing touches on my physiological psychology term project, which had been due on Friday—the day after Katie dumped me. Fortunately, Professor Griffen was a good guy, and he'd given me a twenty-four-hour extension. I had three and a half of those hours left to cross my t's and dot my i's.

  I'd been listening to a lot of Ani DiFranco since the split—Katie had recommended her, and as much as I hated to admit it, I actually liked her and her music.

  "Love is a piano dropped from a fourth-story window,” she sang, “and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

  I had my stereo whispering for once, instead of blaring. There'd been a big party over at the Ross Townhouses the night before, but I'd been squirreled away in my friend Perveen's senior-thesis carrel in the library, struggling to find the last connections between the neural structures involved in love and addiction, so I'd skipped it. This had been the last big party of the term, though, so I imagine most everyone else had been there. Now, just after seven a.m., it was quiet on Stew 2, a coed hall, and all signs pointed to it remaining quiet until eleven or so, which was why the assertive knock at my door took me by surprise. Except for Dee, who was by then surely folded into the full lotus position in Hepburn Lounge, everyone else in the dorm ought to have been sleeping it off.

  "Come in,” I called, not looking up from my laptop.

  The knock sounded again, louder this time.

  Annoyed, I pushed away from my desk and went to the door.

  Standing in the hall was a complete stranger. How had he gotten into the building? The Midd-wide access-card system had recently been changed to twenty-four-hour security, and now only students, faculty, and campus police could enter Middlebury College's dormitories without an escort. The stranger wasn't in uniform—he wore a conservative gray suit and held a snap-brim hat in his right hand—so I knew he wasn't a campus cop. He was old, too old to be a dad, and there was a scowl on his lined face which seemed somehow more sad than threatening.

  "Can I help you?” I asked.

  "I'm looking for Ally,” he said, leaning forward against the doorjamb. “Is she in?"

  "Ally? No, sorry,” I said, “there's no Ally here."

  "Sign says Ally.” He frowned, pointing at one of the postings on my door.

  I glanced at the cardboard square and laughed. “Ally,” I explained, “as in the Allied Powers. Not like a deserted alley. It's a job description, not a name. My name's Max, and I'm officially a junior counselor and unofficially an ally, what we call a ‘safe space'—kids on the floor who want to talk about their sexuality without fear of being judged can come to me. All us Residential Life staff members are allies, it's sort of part of the job.” I caught myself before launching into an op-ed piece on the importance of education and acceptance in the gay community and got back to the point. “Who are you?" I demanded. “What do you want? And how did you—?"

  "I'm Detective Branigan, Max,” he interrupted, flipping open a leather wallet and showing me a gold shield with the words “Burlington PD” on it. “I'm with the Homicide Bureau."

  I took a step back into my room, away from him. “H-homicide?” I stammered. “What—what are you doing here?"

  His scowl deepened. “I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, Max, but one of the kids on this hall died sometime last night."

  "Died?” I repeated, bewildered. “One of mine? Are you—are you sure?"

  He nodded sadly. “I'm sure. Her roommate found the body and called it in. She's already identified her, but, since you're the JC on the floor, well, we'd like you to confirm the identification before we notify the parents."

  There were a hundred questions I probably should have asked, but somehow I couldn't think of any of them.

  One of my girls was dead? I had no idea how to react, how to respond. This was something they hadn't covered in my JC training.

  My heart pounding dully in my chest, I followed him as he left my doorway and walked next-door to the women's bathroom.

  Usually deserted at this early hour on a weekend, the bathroom now was bustling with activity. In the middle of a circle of policemen, a white sheet covered what had to be the dead girl's body.

  Detective Branigan moved to the figure's head and pulled the sheet away from her face.

  And that was when the piano finished its four-story freefall and slammed into me.

  The dead girl was Katie.

  * * * *

  The next several hours went by in a blur. Someone—it must have been me, although I don't remember—called a floor meeting and told the rest of the hall. We were all in shock, of course, completely devastated. I think everyone cried, even Jake, our token football player. I know I did.

  Afterwards, Gavin started planning a memorial service for Katie—which Katie herself would have found way ironic. The day before, early Friday afternoon, Gavin had stormed into my room, totally upset. He and Katie had gone to lunch together, he'd told me, as they did every Friday, and in the salad line at Proctor he'd asked her out to dinner.

  "On a date?” Katie'd said. “Have you lost your mind?"

  And then she'd laughed at him.

  Gavin, of course, had been mortified. He'd dropped his tray and sped back to Stewart, heading immediately to my room to tell me what had happened and to ask for my advice.

  Maybe I shouldn't admit this—I certainly didn't say it to Gavin—but I was secretly pleased. Katie had dumped me on Thursday afternoon, claiming she was tired of hiding, tired of not being able to tell her friends about our relationship. If anyone had found out that I was dating one of my freshmen, though—well,
I would have been fired, for starters, probably bounced out of the dorm, and possibly even suspended from school. I'd believed Katie when she'd told me that that was the reason she was breaking up with me, and her refusal to go out with Gavin was reassuring. I told myself that as soon as the year was over and my JC obligations were history, we could go back to the way things had been between us, pick up where we'd left off. That's why I'd let her keep the red Hingham Hockey sweatshirt she'd swiped off my chair one chilly October evening when we'd been watching a DVD in my room.

  Anyway, once I'd finally convinced Gavin that this was not the end of his undergraduate love life, I'd booted him out of my room. As I ushered him out the door, I spotted Ethan, his roommate, disappearing down the hall.

  Perfect. How much of our conversation had that little sneak overheard?

  * * * *

  Later, after the floor meeting, by the time I remembered Professor Griffen's paper, my deadline extension had come and gone. My heart wasn't even near it, let alone in it, but I managed to focus enough to finish proofreading the last couple of pages and e-mail it off to him with an explanation. I was pretty sure he'd understand—and if not, well, whatever.

  Late Saturday afternoon, I was lying on my bed, still in shock. Katie was dead. She was dead. And the policeman who was investigating her death was a homicide cop. Was it possible that she'd been murdered?

  I was curled up in the fetal position, cupping my iPod in my hands, watching a video of her I'd taken late one night with my digital camera's video-capture mode.

  Late nights were the only times we had ever really been able to be alone. She'd wait for her roommate Dee to fall asleep and the hallway to clear, then slip silently past Gavin and Ethan's room and the bathroom and into mine, where we'd sit up till all hours, mostly just talking about everything under the sun, until it was time for her to slip back down the hall before the earlybirds began to stir.

  In the video, Katie was holding her hairbrush like a microphone and singing along with Vampire Weekend's “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” with all the energy and conviction of an American Idol audition. Her long blond hair flew as she shook her head to the beat, her blue eyes sparkling like sapphires as they reflected the glow from the desk lamp I'd pointed at her to illuminate the scene.

  Although I wasn't wearing my headphones—I didn't think I could handle listening to Katie attempting to match Ezra Koenig's falsetto just yet—I didn't hear a knock, so it surprised me to see Detective Branigan's head peek around the edge of my open door. As surreptitiously as I could, I slipped my iPod beneath my pillow.

  "I know this is a bad time, Max,” he said, “but can I talk to you for a few minutes?"

  I waved him to my desk chair, which he swung around to face me.

  "I need to ask you some questions.” He spoke quietly. “Do you think you can handle that?"

  "Can you tell me what happened to her, first?” I asked, my voice cracking. “How did she die?"

  He tapped a Winston out of a pack, looked around for an ashtray, and when I shook my head, put his lighter away and slowly rolled the unlit cigarette between his palms. “We're not sure yet,” he admitted. “The cause of death seems to have been a blow to the head—but there just wasn't enough blood in the bathroom for her to have died there. We think she must have died somewhere else and then been moved into the bathroom afterwards. We'll know more after the autopsy."

  "So she was murdered?"

  "I'm afraid so.” He wasn't the least bit afraid, I thought, but I knew what he meant. “Look, Max, I'm truly sorry you lost a friend, but I—"

  "No, it's all right,” I interrupted. “We need to find out who did this. How can I help?"

  He pulled a little spiral notepad out of his inside jacket pocket and flipped it open. “For starters, tell me where you were last night."

  The question stunned me. “Am I a suspect?"

  "At this point,” he said, “I'm just trying to get a sense of who was where when it happened."

  I had to think for a moment: Last night seemed so far away. “I went to the library after dinner,” I said, “around seven-thirty. My friend Perveen, she's a senior, she loaned me her thesis carrel. I had to work on my psych paper, and I wanted to be somewhere where I wouldn't be disturbed. Somewhere along the line, I just couldn't concentrate any longer—” I paused again, making sure I had it as right as I could get it. “I guess it must have been around one a.m., so I packed it in and came back here. I thought about stopping by my friend Larry's room, but then I remembered that he's gone home for the weekend to study for finals."

  "Did anyone see you in the library?"

  "I—I don't know. I don't think so. I didn't see anyone I knew."

  "And where were you at three-fifteen?"

  "Here, sound asleep. Why? Is that when—?"

  He flipped back several pages. “According to the computer records, that's when Katie used her access card to let herself into the dorm."

  I frowned. “That's awfully late for Katie. She never stays out past, I don't know, maybe two?"

  He made a note. “I see.” He let a moment go by, and then he closed his notebook and looked straight into my eyes. “You seem to be taking this really hard, Max. Were you and Katie particularly close?"

  I swallowed. Did he know about us? How could he? I'd never told anyone about our relationship. Had Katie?

  "We were pretty good friends,” I finally said. “She was one of my freshmen here on the floor, of course, so I saw her all the time. We hung out. We were on the Student Activities Board together, and she used to ask me for help with her psych homework—she was a history major, she knew all about what people did, but sometimes she had trouble understanding why they did it."

  "I have the same problem in my line of work,” he said, nodding. Maybe he didn't know about our relationship, after all. “Was there anyone who disliked Katie? Anyone she fought with?"

  For that one, I didn't need to think before answering. “Dee,” I said. “Her roommate. She and Katie fought all the time. They fought last night, actually, before the picnic."

  "Picnic?"

  "They—Katie and Dee—Gavin and Ethan, too, actually—they were all in the same first-year seminar, Introduction to the Sociology of Gender. Professor Farmer always has a late-night picnic for his seminar students at his house at the end of the term. It's indoors, I don't know why he calls it a picnic, but he does. He lives a mile or so out of town, north on Route Seven. Anyway, before they left for the picnic, Dee and Katie got into a huge argument. Katie thought Dee had stolen her iPod. She accused her of it, and Dee went crazy—it was awful. They were both yelling at each other. Their room is three doors down the hall, but I could hear them from here. I went over and told them to knock it off, and Katie came here for a minute to tell me what had happened. She actually—” I swallowed back a lump in my throat—"she was sitting right there where you're sitting."

  He gave me a minute to compose myself. When I started breathing again, he resumed his questioning. “Anyone else? Anyone she recently had issues with?"

  Should I tell him about Gavin?

  He sensed my hesitation. “Anything you can give us may help,” he said kindly.

  I drew in a breath and decided to risk it. “Yesterday, this guy on the hall, Gavin, asked her out. Katie said no—she wasn't interested in being in a relationship, I think, and, besides, Gavin's not really her type. He came to me, told me about it—Gavin did, I mean. I calmed him down, reminded him that one ‘no’ from one girl wasn't the end of the world. He was pretty steamed about the situation when he stormed in here, but I think he was okay when he left. I don't think he was ever mad enough to—to do anything to hurt Katie. That's—I mean—no, I'm sure he wasn't."

  "All right, Max, thanks.” He slipped the notebook into his jacket pocket and stood up. “I think that's enough for now. If I need to ask you any more questions, is it okay if I come back?"

  I nodded.

  "Here's my number,” he said, handing me a busi
ness card. “You think of anything else, give me a call, okay?” He opened the door and walked off down the hall.

  * * * *

  Just the thought of it was staggering.

  Katie had been killed, probably murdered, not even two days after dumping me. That made me the spurned lover, and, regardless of what Branigan said, I've seen enough cop shows on TV to know that a spurned lover is an obvious suspect.

  I hadn't killed Katie, I knew that. But I also knew that, in order to protect myself from being suspect number one and chance the truth coming out and getting me tossed out of Middlebury halfway through my junior year, I'd have to figure out who did kill her before the detective dug any deeper into our relationship.

  Right, sure, Max, you're a big twenty years old, and now all you have to do is put on your Hardy Boys outfit and beat the police to a murderer. Piece of cake!

  I knocked on Katie's door.

  Well, not Katie's any longer. Dee's door, now, only Dee's.

  She opened it, bouncing up and down impatiently on her perfectly pedicured toes, equally unsurprised and unhappy to see me. Dee is the pretty one on the floor—her family emigrated to Boston from Kashmir ten years ago, and Dee'd brought with her the glossy black hair and striking features of a Bollywood film star—but right now her oval face was somber.

  "Look,” she said, waving vaguely towards Katie's side of the large double room, “I'm not going to tell anyone about you two, if that's why you're here. It's none of my business. It's nobody's business."

  I gaped at her. “You—you knew?"

  "Oh, Max, of course I knew. It was so totally obvious—I realized what was going on like six weeks ago."

  "But—but I—"

  "The way you looked at her? I might be a freshman, but I'm not stupid."

  I swallowed hard. “Dee, you can't—"

  "I'm not going to bust you, Max. I haven't said a word about it to anyone, and I'm not going to tell anyone now."