He needed to get away. Too much had happened in the last 24 hours. He decided to change things quickly. He threw his fishing pole and tackle box in the back of his Ford and headed for the cabin. A couple of hours later after winding up the river road for about 10 miles he saw the familiar gravel drive to the place his dad built. It was a wooden building, moss covered on the north side and well worn on the front porch with the white 2 X 4 rail. He couldn’t wait to get out the old chair and the rickety maple table where the coffee and donuts would sit. He would call the office and let them know where he was and tell them he’d be back around noon tomorrow. He went to the cupboard, grabbed the coffee and prepared to rest until late afternoon. The fish don’t bite until the last two to three hours of the day.
Joyce though Edward was a strange old bird. She was new in this town and this job. Having moved from the bustling city and the job that was a dead end and from a marriage that was dead, she was new to alot of things. She was settled into her new digs and her new office which actually had a door and a window. The window looked out on the parking lot but it was a window. She was aware that Edward had been the previous police chief. She knew his family had been killed in a freak fire that have level the home he shared with them. She understood why he had resigned. She could comprehend how close he came to losing his mind. He was not that strange after all. They stood in his kitchen as she tried to get some information out of him. He was the closest living relative of the current, well now deceased, police chief. He was distantly related to the librarian also. He had no information. He had not spoken to his brother in law since the funeral. He was clueless and so was she. All she had to write in her report was that this fire was not an accident. She would have to pull the pieces together from somewhere. Someone wanted that house to be leveled and turned to dust. There was some rage in this act of arson.
Not the white hot, searing, flashing, rage of lost tempers and hurt feelings, but the deep-seated, slow, seething rage of a spurned lover or wronged partner. The former start fires in a single spot with a pile of kindling and wood, a gas soaked rag wrapped around a brick and thrown through a window. This was not that kind of fire. This fire was planned; built and executed methodically as if the arsonist were massaging his anger while he built an elaborate funeral pyre around his victim. For one thing, there were multiple starting points around the home. For another, a fire ignited at each exit to the house. For yet another, each was ignited simultaneously. This fire had probably taken months to plan, but only moments to execute. This fire was someone’s revenge. This fire was someone’s masterpiece.
Meanwhile in a secluded laboratory deep in the woods the insane scientist continues to mix his potion of doom. He cackles, remembering the way he set the fires using an accelerant made of TNT , moose sweat, and a McDonalds McFlurry. “I will be King of the World Someday” he proclaims, for a moment forgetting that just this morning he had strangled his trusty lab assistant, Flora McDougal. “Flora, where are you?” he queries, absently stepping over her body on his way to the loo.
Suddenly the warning siren blares. His sanctuary has been breeched. Will this be the end of his delicious wickedness?
Joyce threw down the paperback novel. She had wanted something to do when she got home from Edwards but this was not working. The book had actually been a reading assignment for her class on “The Psychology of Fire Makers”. It was a required class for her certificate. She already had a college degree but the certificate had been needed to meet her state level of continuing education points. It was supposed to show the general publics view of people who committed arson. The book was badly written and badly researched but it did show that general opinion that only those who were insane started fires. She tossed it back into a box of unpacked books. The evening had been restless and she was looking for answers. They were not in that book, but it did remind her that it had taken intelligence to set that fire. She needed to sleep…tomorrow was going to be brutal between the visit to the morgue, the newspapers and the TV Media. She was supposed to have answers and she didn’t have them. What a way to start a new job.
Meanwhile, unaware of everything else, Edward was fishing in the pond behind his cabin. He was trying to catch some freshwater bass for dinner, but nothing was biting yet. He dozed a little only to be awakened by a big tug on the end of his line. This was the big one! It was the heaviest thing he’d ever reeled in back here, so he pulled harder. “Help, Help!” called a strange female voice. He ignored it and kept pulling. He wasn’t going to let this one get away. Finally, a mermaid popped out of the water at the end of his line. He freed her from the hook, then after he decided that he was hallucinating, he went back into his cabin to drink some coffee.
When he went back to the lake, the mermaid was waiting for him. He pinched himself and she laughed. “Thank you for releasing me,” she said. “I will now free you from all illnesses you have. All you have to do is take my hand.” Dazed, he took her hand and felt a warm tingling course through his body. He felt more energetic and happier now. “Now if you just wear this bracelet I made you, you won’t get sick ever again.” He took it and eagerly put it on his wrist. “Thank you,” he said. “What’s your name?” “You may call me Violet because that’s the color of my tail if you wish. Goodbye!” He looked at the charm on the bracelet. It looked like it was made from abalone marbled with gold. He went back into his cabin and pondered what to do next. (Sorry guys, I couldn’t resist adding another paragraph this time after I thought of all this last night).
Some people live in a world of fantasy, others in a world of grim reality, and still others in a world of mystery and thrilling suspense. No one can live in all three and remain sane. These were the thoughts running through Charlie’s head as he typed up his report from the witness statements. Although there were few, there was little consistency among them. Either there was a vehicle or there wasn’t. Either it was a truck or it was an SUV. Either there was one person or there were two. One statement in particular was all over the place. Edward Curry, known as ‘Hurry Curry’ in the neighborhood. related a fantastic tale in which a doctor and a mermaid did a ritual dance around the building, then literally flew around and over it once spewing some incantation when the house spontaneously lifted from the ground, fire burning beneath as from a gas stove, and shooting out the windows and doors. Then the doctor and mermaid walked away. No truck. No SUV. No magic stage coach. A mashup of fantasy, reality and thrills resulting in a big mystery. Like he was thinking - insane. Everyone knew Hurry Curry was nuts. Well, it was Charlie’s job to take the statements, not to make any sense of them. Who knew if there might be a kernel of truth in it? That wasn’t Charlie’s job, it was for Joyce Bestard to sort out.
we have some talented writers!!! I watch with anticipation the rest of the story!!
Thanks for the compliment. I’m trying to get over some writer’s bloc right now.
With the help of Marie and two boys who were sure that they could make toast, Jim was in the car, sans sticky toast and on his way to the hospital. He was in his best suit and his empty briefcase was on the seat beside him. He didn’t have anything to put into it yet but he was sure that would be corrected soon. The plans according to the letter he had received is that there would be a welcoming committee to meet him consisting of the Mayor and Council Members and his administrative staff. There would be a small ceremony with coffee and pastries following. When he pulled up to the hospital the ER entrance was full. Must have been some accident on the highway. He found the main entrance but it was empty. As he started down the main hall to the administrative wing a middle aged woman dressed as an older woman in a cardigan came scurrying towards him. “You are Jim Scott? You are the one?” she queried. “Yes I am, do you know where the meeting is going to take place?” He had a hard time saying ceremony. “It’s been cancelled! The Mayor is dead. Some others are dead. Come this way. I am your secretary. My name is Annie.” I went into nurse mode. Putting together the string of facts as they were rattled out of this small woman’s even smaller mouth. As we arrived at the administrative wing she ushered me into an office labeled “Administrator”. “I’ll be back in a minute, how do you like your coffee?” Before I could answer she was gone. The Mayor was dead? How? What happened? If he had not been so concerned about this ceremony he would have paid more attention to the sense of emergency that penetrated the whole hospital and not just the ER. Before he could make a complete inspection of the room some young woman popped her head in the door, asking in a slightly hysterical tone. “Do you have the keys to the morgue?”
Jim had come that first day to work with high hopes. His first job as a hospital administrator. The hospital had only 100 licensed beds and the town was small but it was important to him to be successful here. This was a big jump from the assistant administrator position he’d held in a Birmingham, AL hospital. He’d driven to work in a dream to his first big job. The night before had been rough with the storm and all, but the back fence could be easily fixed. Where were the keys to the morgue? The first foot in the door of the hospital told him that something terrible was wrong. He asked her “Why do you need the morgue keys?” She cried, “they’re all gone.” I shouted “Annie” in my most commanding Administrator voice. She came immediately and I told her the need. She confirmed the young woman’s information. They were all dead. And, Annie repeated a rumor she had heard. They believed the fire was arson set. Annie got the morgue key and the three of us headed down the hall to the elevators and the basement morgue. Jim’s first day on the job was going to be one he would never forget.
Jim followed Annie down the stairs to the morgue to see the bodies for himself. He was having a hard time wrapping his brain around everything that had happened during the last 24 hours and needed to see the bodies for himself. He pulled the sheets off of each corpse one by one, until he reached the body of the Mayor. He respectfully pulled the sheet back slowly. The Mayor’s body sat up, and in a hoarse voice said, “It was you!” and laid down again. He quickly put the sheet back on the corpse and ran back upstairs, scared, vowing to never look at fresh corpses again in the morgue.
“Come Back!” Annie hollered to Scott’s fast moving backside and then ran around the table towards the huddling figure. “Edward Curry! That was not nice! You want to get suspended like you did last time?” It was all she could do to get Jim down those stairs again and bring him face to face with Edward Curry. Hurry Curry thought this was the height of fun to scare people in the morgue. His job as orderly/parking lot attendant/cafeteria worker and all around helper gave him lots of access to many parts of the hospital. He knew someone was gonna come see these bodies and he wanted to play his joke. Jim was controlling his shaking legs and his anger as he looked this man over… Edward Curry was not making a good impression on his new boss. He turned to look around the room more as something to do with his legs than anything else. It was a traditional morgue. Small, stainless steel, sinks, lamps, refrigerator, operating table, concrete floor. As he made his way around the room he made note of improvements needed. Computer system, phone system, generator, new lighting were just the beginning of the list. He was back at the door when Joyce, the new arson inspector arrived. She introduced herself and then they all were standing waiting. For what he did not know. Annie then informed them that the part time doc who did the autopsy’s was on his way from the next county. Jim wondered why a part time doc was in another county. He wondered why they only needed him part time. His mind was making a long list of things to wonder about but first he wondered why these people were all dead. Because they were all dead.
Jim thought that it looked like a serial killer’s work based on the glimpses he had had of the bodies earlier. But he wasn’t sure because he was no expert on the subject. It just looked like they were all about the same age range and it appeared that they had all been killed the same way, in a big fire. He wondered why they’d all been gathered together for a meeting anyway, dismissed it, and turned around to back upstairs, remembering that he wasn’t supposed to be working in the morgue anyways. Joyce asked him a few brief questions, but since he was on his way back to his desk and knew nothing useful, she let him go upstairs to his desk. He started typing up an inventory report based on what he had noticed needed to be replaced or repaired earlier.
He started typing and the first thing on the list was a crash cart for the morgue. He wondered what Annie thought of him bolting upstairs like that. He wasn’t scared. He had noticed that there was not a crash cart in the morgue nor was there a crash button on the wall. Nor could he find the phone. If that person was alive, he was gonna need some help and soon. But, he was dead. He finished typing the note and went to HR to get final paperwork in order. The afternoon went quickly with meetings of all kinds, mostly revolving around staff personnel. He was not good with names and it would take a while to get them all sorted out. He knew the hospital was in a uproar and that the autopsy on the bodies had been finished but that was all. On the way home he was thinking about the names of the ones he did know and how funny it was that he knew two Edwards. One who was really strange, somewhat dysfunctional and loved to play jokes. The other who was just a bit strange, who appeared to function just fine and who had not reappeared since he left in the police car. As he pulled into the driveway he was pleased to see that Edward was home and that his wife had placed the pile of boxes and the garbage cans next to the open hole in the fence. He needed to find the lumber store this weekend.
Edward was an odd duck and frequently piled up garbage outside his house. Problem was, the garbage was often items he had pilfered from the Manchester Estate at the end of the street. The Manchesters were oblivious to Edward and his felonious ways, preferring to spend their days in Time Share locations such as Galt, California and Bergdorf, Germany. So Edward was in the perfect position to slip personal items, even furniture ,out of the majestic brick home. So it was that morning when Edward slyly slipped into the great room for another treasure. The rolled up carpet seemed unusually heavy, he thought, hoisting it over his shoulder. The missus must have tucked some object d art in this little beauty. As Edward sidled down the darkening street the bundle began to shift. Edward shrieked in horror when a slender white hand emerged from the folds of carpeting. He recognized the signature manicure, the cerulean blue tips with tiny dolphins painted on each tiny nail…
He went into his house and discussed the fence situation with his wife. Marie had a better idea about how to fix the fence that was cheaper since they were on a tight budget due to the move. “Why don’t we go get some free pallets from the local grocery store, break them down, and build a fence out of that?” Jim agreed that her idea was better for the environment anyways, so he called the nearest grocery store to see if they would help.
Meanwhile, his neighbor Edward Deweys returned from his day of relaxation in a new car. He pulled into his garage and parked it. He went upstairs and decided to test out the bracelet Violet the mermaid had given him to see if it would work and protect his health or not. He tested a few things he was allergic to first. No reactions came from any of his normal allergies, so he tried cutting his hand to see if he would bleed. Sure enough, he was invincible to bleeding, too. Since he was now invincible, he could turn his attention to the stash owned by the wealthy neighbors down the street.
It was his neighbor, Donna. He carefully put the body down without touching the corpse. Then he raced back to his house and dialed 911. He told the dispatcher that he’d been hired to take care of his neighbor’s house while they were gone, and found the body in the carpet while trying to take it out to be cleaned, and was surprised to find the lady of the house’s dead body in it.