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Story about a murder/suicide

1

Gina drove down the rain-soaked street with the windshield wipers on high speed. The rain was coming down fast, flooding intersections, and she passed a couple of stalled cars as she turned into her neighborhood.

A couple of blocks from home, she passed the ‘crazy poster house’. From force of habit, she turned to look at it. The owner was a middle aged guy who biked around the neighborhood collecting junk from trash piles. He plastered posters on the outside walls of his house, giving it its nickname. They were old movie posters, and over time, the print had run and the paper torn until they gave the house a forlorn, bedraggled look. Glancing at it in passing had become one of those little tics Gina had formed, like counting the dishes as she washed and dried them, or checking the weather on the internet before getting dressed for work every day.

Today, Gina looked, drove on for a few seconds, then slammed on the brakes. She put the car in reverse and looked again. In the backyard, on a little patio area of flagstones, a dozen turkey vultures strutted around pecking at something on the ground. A small black cat sat watching them, not venturing into the flock of threatening looking black birds.

As she sat, wondering if the cat was going to be dessert for the vultures, another bird flew in. Gina looked up at the direction it had come from, and then noticed that there were three or four more on each of the lamp posts nearby, looking hungrily down, waiting their turn at whatever lay beneath. This looked pretty disturbing, especially with the weather so gloomy. There must be something really delicious, she thought, for those awful-looking creatures to be out in these conditions.

Gina got out her cell phone and called Charlie, a friend who was on the neighborhood watch patrol. 'Charlie, I’m sitting here in the rain looking at about two dozen turkey vultures at the poster house. They’re in the backyard, right next to the back door of the house. How strange is that! I’m worried, Charlie. Do y’think I should go up and see what they’re feasting on?'

Charlie shouted into the phone: 'Are you crazy? There must be something in the water over there! Wait in your car, and I’ll meet you in five minutes. Don’t get out, though. Take a look at the beaks on those birds, and you’ll understand why.'

'OK, OK, just hurry', Gina implored. 'This is so creepy.'

Charlie drove up soon, and jumped from his car to hers. They sat, looking at the spectacle for a few minutes. It was quite a sight, all those birds on the ground, and some sitting in the downpour on the lampposts up and down the block.

'You know', Charlie finally asked, 'have you ever noticed that bald guy who walks his mangy black dog? The one who always wears the tie-dyed t-shirt? He walks by here, and one day I saw him going up and knocking on the door. The guy who lives here answered and let him in. That was quite awhile ago, but it’s weird that those two oddballs know each other and seem to be friends.'

Gina told Charlie she knew who he meant. 'Yeah, every time I meet him on one of my walks, he does an army ‘about-face’ and goes the other way. He won’t get near anyone, and once, when I managed to get close enough to say ‘hi’, he stood still and turned the other way. He’s just shy, though, I think. Maybe pathologically shy, but he looks harmless enough.' '

'Ha', Charlie barked cynically. 'No one’s harmless. And don’t go walking up to strangers' doors to satisfy your errant curiosity. Let’s call the police and if a patrol car is nearby, maybe they can take a look.'

'Good idea', Gina agreed. She didn’t really want to go up there, birds or not, but something didn’t look right. She wouldn’t be able to rest easy until she found out what was going on, if anything.

Charlie called 911 and soon a cop car showed up. Gina and Charlie jumped out of her car and ran over. The officer, Ben, was known to them both, and he invited them to sit in his back seat. Gina told him what she had seen, pointing to all the birds still at the back door of the house, and then to the birds overhead on the poles. Ben looked over at the house, then up at the birds hovering overhead.

'Wow', he breathed softly. 'What the hell is going on there. I don’t want to get near all of that, but something big must be lying over there to attract that many of those carrion-eating creatures. There must be some way to find out without becoming their next meal.'

'Well, you’d better get going then, before they destroy all the evidence, Ben.'

'Get outta here, Charlie', Ben scolded. 'Whaddya think, there’s a dead body? I mean a person?'

'How do you know there isn’t?' Gina asked. 'You just said it must be big, so if it isn’t a big dog, well, this is Sarasota, so maybe it’s an elephant?'

'OK, I’m going', Ben answered. 'But I’m taking my gun along. I’ll fire it into the flock if necessary, but sure hope it isn’t. You know there would be some kind of inquiry if I actually had to shoot, even if it was just to scare the damn birds off.'

Ben got out of the back seat and walked toward the house, keeping a wary eye on the birds above. As he got nearer to the house, he could smell something rotten, and hoped that it wouldn’t be too disgusting. He wasn’t a rookie, but in this town there really wasn’t much action. Dead bodies were a rarity, and he’d never had to deal with a murder before.

When the birds saw him coming close, they ran clumsily away, flapping slowly up into the grey air. The birds came to roost in the live oak nearby, Spanish moss swaying in the gusty wind. When Gina and Charlie saw the birds take off, they got out of the car and ran over. Ben warned them back. 'Stay there until I tell you. If this really is a crime scene, you can’t be walking through it.' He approached the back door cautiously, and saw the entrails of something recently alive. Ben made sure there were no birds close enough to attack him, and went into the patio. He noticed a carcass nearby, with the head of a large dog. There was no fur attached, but he thought it resembled the black mangy dog that he often saw being walked by the guy one street over.

Ben called Charlie and Gina into the yard. 'Come on back. No crime scene, just a big, dead dog.' When they got into the yard, Gina gasped in revulsion. ' Geez, it’s that mangy dog. Why is it here? I saw that old guy walking this dog just yesterday.'

'Well, the dog did look sick, definitely had mange, and maybe he was visiting his friend here and it died. Those two wierdos might have just decided to let the vultures have it, chuckled Ben. Saves the trouble of digging a grave for it, after all.'

'Speaking of digging graves', Charlie said, 'what’s with this woman next door. She comes out here in the middle of the night and seems to be digging a moat around her house. I’ve seen her with a sledge hammer breaking up the concrete on her front porch. What’s she up to?'

Ben explained that she was reported to be a paranoid schizophrenic, and the moat was to prevent enemies from getting to her. It was protection from evil forces or something.

The rain had let up while the three of them had been investigating the birds on the patio. Charlie turned around and began to walk over to the so-called moat next door to see for himself how it looked. Gina and Ben followed, out of curiosity. Black mold grew on the eaves and around the outside of the windows, and the front yard was full of dirt mounds from the moat excavation. They stood in the street and looked over the edge of the water-filled ditch, and watched as a glimmer of bald head and scrap of tie-dyed t-shirt floated just beneath the surface. Gina looked up and saw a vulture sitting on the ground nearby, waiting.

2

Ben was the first one to speak. ‘You two, it’s time to break up this party. Get back in your cars and go home. I’ve got a couple of calls to make.’ He pulled out his walkie-talkie and called in a possible homicide, asking for backup and an ambulance.

Then he got back into his patrol car, pulled it over to the curb, and turned it off. The medical examiner would come, along with one or two homicide detectives. He opened the trunk and got out some supplies to cordon off the area. It was just the time of the afternoon when school buses would start dropping off local kids, and between that and the weather, this could turn into a real mess. Pretty soon, the other neighborhood officer, Frank, arrived and while Frank stood near the ditch, Ben went back to the house. He tried the back door and found it unlocked. He alerted Frank that the door was open and to keep an eye out for any suspicious movement near the house, then began to walk around the house to see if there were footprints, or any obvious evidence that would point to what happened to the victim. Just as he finished examining the perimeter, he saw a couple of official cars pull up, and the crime scene investigators got out and walked over to the ditch.

Ben walked back over and told them everything that had happened. He told them what he had heard about the woman who lived in the house on whose land the body had been found, and the investigators immediately confirmed that she was, indeed, mentally ill. A crowd of school kids had gathered across the street now, and one of the investigators, Sue, walked over and questioned the older of them.

‘Do you know who lives here?’

The oldest boy stepped forward. ‘Sure. She’s a crazy lady. She beats on her sidewalk with a sledge hammer and puts the broken pieces near the front door. Like a barrier or something. There it is’, he pointed. ‘Right by the front door, there, propped up.’

Sue looked over and saw the sledge hammer.

‘And what about the house next door? The poster house? Who lives there?’

‘He’s just some guy who rides around on his bike collecting stuff. His bike is usually parked right by the back door, and it’s not there now, so he probably isn’t home.’

Sue walked back to the ditch and asked Frank and Ben to go up to the moat house with her. She sent Alex and John the other two investigators, to check the poster house.

As the trio got closer to the moat house, their attention was drawn to the sledgehammer. It was under the front eaves, protected from the downpour . They could see dark stains on it. Sue pulled on a pair of latex gloves as she bent over, and pulled the tool away from the house, careful to keep it out of the drizzle. She could see dark stains, and also black hair stuck to the business end. She carried it to the cruiser and bagged it, then laid it carefully in the trunk.

‘Well, from what the kids across the street told me, the woman who lives here is home‘, Sue said. ‘The house looks dark, but I understand that there’s no electricity going to it. Let’s knock on the door and try to go in before the sun goes down.’ Frank and Ben began to walk around the perimeter again, just in case someone inside started to leave. Sue knocked and waited a minute or two, and as there was no movement or sound from inside, tried the door. No luck. It was locked, and so was the back door. Good time to be able to use the sledge hammer, she thought. Sue called out to Frank, who came back around and tried one of the front windows. It opened easily, and he climbed through into the front room. He opened the front door from inside, and soon all three were walking through the house.

Ben called out ‘Hello, we’re police officers here to find out if you’re OK. Anyone home?’ The smell of mold permeated the air. Dust motes hung in the dim light filtering in from the torn and filthy curtains. They walked through to the bedroom on the right. As Sue crossed the threshold, she saw the woman sitting in a small rocking chair near a window set high in the wall. Looking up at the window she saw, through layers of dust and cobwebs, more storm clouds gathering outside.

Frank pushed into the room behind her, and walked up to the woman. ‘Hey, look, you have to answer a few questions. Do you hear me?’ There was no response, so Frank took her arm and helped her to stand. The woman didn’t offer any resistance, and walked out to the front room. When she saw the crowd gathered in the front yard though, she shrank back into the hallway. ‘No, no, can’t go out there’, she whispered hoarsely.

Sue walked quietly over to her and said, ‘Ms Julie, we’ll protect you. We want you to come down to the station and tell us what happened. There’s a man outside in your ditch. Maybe a car ran over him? Somehow he fell in, and we wonder if you could help us find out who he is and what happened.’ Sue’s soft voice and repetition seemed to calm the woman. They walked out and both got into the police cruiser. Frank and Ben followed in a few minutes, leaving the house for the forensic team.

 

3

As they approached the poster house, Alex and John looked up to see the trees and light poles heavy with Spanish moss and turkey vultures. The wind and rain had started again, and there was no light on inside the house to guide them.

They split up, each trying a door. After a few minutes of knocking and no one answering, they tried going in at the patio door. They stepped over the carcass of the dog and entered the small back porch. The interior door was ajar, so they went in and walked through the kitchen into the living room. Posters decorated all the walls of the inside of the house, too. Alex stood in the middle of the room in awe of the amount of‘ trash covering every surface and all of the floor. ‘That kid across the street said this guy collected junk and he wasn’t kidding. Look at all this moldy s**t. Let’s hurry this up and get outta here.’

They walked cautiously around the mess on the floor and continued on through the rest of the house. The only sound they could hear was the wind outside, and the rain against the windows.

This place stinks, with all the trash. This guy is as nutty as the old lady next door.’ Alex looked around, wondering what crazy thing they would run into next.

‘Yeah, and where is Mr. Nut? He’s probably in the refrigerator, chillin’. The AC isn’t on in here, so that’s where I’d be.’ John replied

‘Jesus christ, John, that’s not even funny. This is a creepy day in a creepy house, and there’s a dead dog here and a dead guy out there in the ditch. It’s raining and windy, and I feel like I’m walking around in one of those horror novels by that guy who lives out on Casey Key.’

By this time they were into the back bedroom. ‘Turn on the light. The smell in here is horrible. Let’s see what we’re stepping in before we step in it’, John said with his hand over his nose. He reached over for the light switch, and they both stopped dead in their tracks.

‘Not a step further, John gasped. As the light came on, Alex and John could see parts of a dismembered body. Neither one of them had ever seen a spectacle like this, and weren’t willing to proceed alone. ‘Call the M E and Sue.’

Soon, they were all gathered in the room, and stood gaping at the display laid out neatly on the floor.

‘So’, John said in wonder, ‘that explains why there were so many vultures. It wasn’t just the dog. Let’s find out how long this guy’s been dead.’

Sue left John and Alex to finish up their job, and went to join Frank and Ben outside. She told them what they’d found and that it looked like it was probably the owner of the house. ‘Take the sledge hammer down to the lab. Have them check for blood and hair from both victims. If Ms Julie did this, she’s stronger than she looks. She might have had quite a busy day yesterday.’ Sue got into the cruiser with Ben and Frank, and drove downtown to meet with Julie.

Sue found Julie in one of the holding rooms at the station. When Sue opened the door and walked in, Julie looked up with an angry scowl. ‘I can’t stand those people coming to my house. They have to stay away from my house. What if they drown in the moat? That moat’s there for a reason! Make them leave me alone!’ She was beginning to sound hysterical, and Sue sat in front of her, speaking slowly.

‘Listen, Julie, one man did drown in your moat. And his dog is dead, too. Do you know what happened to them?’

‘They have to stay away from me. They have no business knocking on my door. That moat is there for a reason!’ Julie’s voice was reaching a higher pitch with every word. Sue could see that this wasn’t going anywhere, so she switched her tactics.

‘You’re right’, she agreed, ‘in the old days, the person in the castle poured oil on the heads of the invaders. What do people use now? Do they hit them with something?’ Sue knew she had to be careful not to name the murder weapon, but could at least lead her up to it cautiously.

Suddenly, a pained look crossed Julie’s face. She hunched over with her hands held tight between her knees. ‘It was a sledge hammer,’ she said, speaking in a whisper. ‘That’s what people use. Then the invaders don’t come back.’

Sue, keeping her voice steady and calm, agreed that it might do the trick. ‘What happens after they get hit with a sledge hammer? What if there’s no moat? Does the castle owner ever go to the invader’s home?’

‘No, no, it’s dark over there. He has a phone. He was going to tell on me. He doesn’t have a moat so I went in. He was going to tell on me’ Julie repeated disjointedly.

A knock on the door startled Sue, and she went out into the hallway. Her supervisor, Ellen, had the report in her hand. ‘The blood and hair on the hammer are from both victims, and right now, it looks like they were murdered within an hour of each other.’ Ellen told Sue. ‘The fingerprints seem to belong to Julie, so let’s book her.’

 

 

 

 

4

Gina and Charlie had both gone back to Gina’s house. They were drinking coffee and talking about the crime and what might have happened, when the phone rang. It was Alex, telling them he was still in the neighborhood and would drop by for their statements. When she hung the phone up, Charlie said, “Well, maybe we’ll find out what happened.’

‘Yeah, I don’t want to think some random murderer is out roaming the neighborhood. Better to know who did it. I’m sure it’s too early to tell, though. These investigations can go on forever.’

Alex knocked, just then, and Gina let him in. He sat at the kitchen table with them, took out his recorder, and turned it on. Gina looked shaken when Alex told them what had been found in the poster house and that Julie had been taken away for questioning. Charlie shook his head sadly.

‘This has been coming on for a long time’, he said slowly. We all knew she was crazy, but really didn’t think she’d kill somebody. Her dad, though, has been trying to keep her on her meds for years, and she won’t stay on them.’

‘There’s nothing he could do with her as long as she wasn’t endangering anyone,’ Alex assured him,

‘ but now it looks like she has. We don’t know for sure, but she’s all but admitted it. You two tell me what you saw now. Gina, you go first. Charlie, you wait in the other room while I take Gina’s statement, then you come in and I’ll take yours. Please don’t leave anything out.’

Gina told how she had first noticed the vultures, then called Charlie, and Charlie finished the story with Ben arriving in the cruiser and finding the body in the ditch. After Alex left, they went into the living room and sat down, sighing with relief. Gina’s eyes were shiny with tears, though, and when Charlie noticed, said ‘Gina, I hope you don’t feel sorry for Julie. She’ll be taken care of, and maybe even get on meds so she will be better off. She sure won’t be let loose for a long time, I hope. Her house will probably have to be condemned, and maybe even the poster house. It‘s too bad, but in his housing market, who‘d buy something that needed that much fixing up. They must be as bad a wreck inside as out.’

Gina smiled ruefully. ‘Sure, I guess, but those two guys did give this area some character. I’ll miss them. And I guess we’ll never find out why she killed them. Crazy people do crazy things,’ she finished.

She sat, looking out the window to the dark street outside. The sky had cleared and she could see a full moon rising in a silver arc, just over the tree tops.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

Take a look and tell me how this can be improved. It's my first short story, and I like it too much to be unbiased. I am very sure that it can be better.