Rock, Paper, Shotgun

26/02/2013 at 15:07 iucounu says:

By the time Death finally knocked on my front door, I had been expecting it for a month. It was a crisp, clear New England morning, and so I’d heard the rumble of the Sheriff’s Crown Victoria as it wound its way up the track from the Cove. For a second, I thought about running; instead, I made coffee.

I caught my hands shaking as I filled the jug, espresso grounds scattering on the counter like grave-dirt. I steadied myself. Checked myself in the mirror. The extreme edge of panic had receded, but there were dark circles under my eyes, and a streak of white hair at my temples which hadn’t been there back in the summer. That couldn’t be helped.

Car doors slammed in the driveway. I heard the crunch of gravel and autumn leaves under heavy boots. Three of them, I thought. Three and her.

She knocked. I took a deep breath and turned the handle.

At first glance, you didn’t see anything wrong with Jessica Fletcher. People never seemed to get spooked. She’s the nice old lady who writes mysteries, the cosy ones. Her hair always just so. The twinsets and the earrings. The ladies-of-a-certain-age who flock to her book signings love her. I, on the other hand, know her better. I’ve lived in Cabot Cove a long time. I’ve seen what she does.

What stood on the doorstep wore a half-smile on its face; a rouged mask in which bird eyes glittered, unblinking. A predator’s gaze. The skin pulled taut across the skull, gathered behind the ears. Hungry. I’d seen that look before, when the hunt was winding down. The Sheriff and two of his shitkicker deputies loomed behind her, dazed expressions on their faces.

“Hello, Ethan,” said Jessica. “Won’t you invite me in?”

“I can hardly keep you out, can I?” I said. The raptor eyes said, No. “Come in, make yourself comfortable. Would you like coffee?”

I waved them all in to the study. Jessica perched herself on the edge of an old wing chair; the Sheriff sank into my broken-down Lay-Z-Boy, which almost pitched him off backwards. The shitkickers had to loom outside in the hallway. That was OK by me. I handed out coffee, sat down behind my desk and tried to look relaxed.

“What can I do for you, Jessica?” I said.

“It’s about the murder of Ronald Ford,” she said, sweetly. Her lips were stained the colour of liver, to match the outfit.

I looked at the Sheriff. “Did you turn up any new leads?”

“Why don’t you let Ms Fletcher explain?” the Sheriff said, woodenly. The good ol’ boy charm seemed to have ebbed away. Not for the first time, I wondered what she had on him. Why he went along. His face betrayed nothing but a kind of slack incuriosity.

Jessica leaned forward, clutching her handbag to her bosom. “We broke your alibi, Ethan. It’s over.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “You broke my alibi, did you? Oh, well done. You managed to find a way for me to be in two places at once? You know that when Ronald was shot, I was a hundred miles away, in Castle Rock, right? You spoke to the witnesses? All those folks at the Historical Society?”

Jessica’s mask arranged itself into an approximation of a smile. “But Ronald wasn’t killed then. He was killed earlier. You faked the gunshots – fireworks, was it, on a timer? That would account for the black-powder smell in the air, when the gun used smokeless cartridges.”

The Sheriff was nodding. “I have a search warrant for your property, Mr Burrows. I’m betting we’ll find that little gadget somewhere around here. Or would you like to just make things easier on all of us and hand it over right now?”

I shook my head. “This is fascinating, and superficially plausible, but you have no hard evidence.”

Jessica said, “We will.” I saw her knuckles whiten on the handbag, and that’s when I knew the evidence that would hang me was right there. The timer she’d used. Probably with my prints on it. She would have found a way to get them.

She smiled at me, then, as I realised how it was supposed to play out. She could see it all going through my head, and she was enjoying it.

I said to the Sheriff, “I have a shotgun pointed at Ms Fletcher. It’s taped to the underside of my desk. No, please don’t move. The moment you or either of your goons tries anything, I blow away the National Treasure here. Don’t make me do that. I’d like to have a quick chat with you.”

I beckoned the deputies in. “Please unhook your gun belts and pile all your cop stuff in the corner there. Radios and phones too. Sheriff, do the same. No sudden movements, remember?”

He looked at Jessica. She said “It’s all right, Sheriff. Let Mr Burrows talk.” She perched there, calm as anything, a lizard on a flat rock.

When the guns had been collected, I said to the Sheriff, “I need to lay something out for you. You know the kind of work I do with the Historical Society?”

“Sure,” he grunted. “Archives, newsletters, that sort of crap.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Though I take issue with the word ‘crap’. But the last couple of years I’ve been investigating Ms Fletcher, here. On and off, in my spare time. It’s amazing what you can find out these days, with the internet.

“Sheriff, you’re looking at the USA’s most prolific serial killer. She’s sitting right there. She’s quite mad, you know – a psychopath. You’ve been helping her. What I want to know is, why?

“I pulled all the case files, all the court transcripts.” I selected a box of files, kicked them across the dusty carpet to the Sheriff. “She kills them. She kills someone, and frames someone else for it. Victims in thirty states, now.”

The reptilian smile never left her face. “That’s why you like the book tours, isn’t it? Why you fly across the country all the time. All those exotic locations, all those grisly murders. Nobody connects you. Nobody seems to talk about how you show up all the time, and people die soon after.”

The Sheriff, dully: “Ms Fletcher’s been a great help to the police.”

I grinned. “Oh, you have a great clearance rate, Amos. But what’s the murder rate like? Worse than Chicago, per capita. Way worse. And Ms Fletcher’s right at the heart of it. Look through the files. I’ve highlighted all the major inconsistencies. You get those to the defense lawyers, we could undo a lot of the damage she’s done. Not to mention help me get off the hook. I didn’t shoot Ronald. She did. Check her out.”

I put my hand on the stock of the shotgun. “I probably ought to just shoot her, Sheriff. Put her down like a mad dog.”

“Don’t do, that, Mr Burrows,” said Jessica Fletcher, into the stillness that followed. Her voice was harsh, metallic. “You’ve been very clever.”

The little old lady put aside her coffee cup and turned those dead eyes on me. I felt I could see through the mask, now; a soul like a roil of worms, endlessly twisting in the darkness. When she spoke, it was a voice out of a grave.

“You are a historian, Mr Burrows? Very good. So you know that this part of the world is full of … curiosities. Quaint holdovers of olden times. You’ve read all kinds of stories, I’m sure, in all kinds of books.

“One of the books that inspired me, when I began my career in fiction, I found in the library at Miskatonic University. You know the one?”

The stock of the gun was slick with sweat. I dried my hand. “I think so,” I said.

“Then perhaps you’ve seen the book I mean. Have you seen the Yellow Sign, Mr Burrows?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I grated.

Jessica Fletcher’s eyes seemed to fill everything. “Then, you poor boy, you don’t know very much at all, do you? You think this is about murder. It’s not murder if what is dead never dies. And there are worse things than murder.”

I tried to look away – tried to move, to run; part of me screamed to pull the triggers of the shotgun; but I could do nothing. I sat, paralysed, as Jessica Fletcher reached up with her talons to unhook the mask.