January Flash runner up: Wrongful Death Suit, by A.J.

On the outskirts of the crime scene, a young girl was sobbing on her mother’s shoulder, her bike lying against the railing of the Denby Estate. Apparently she’s literally run across the guy’s hand with it.

Detective Johnson wasn’t exactly happy to have been called out so early. It was Sunday, and he’d been hoping, for once, to have a lie-in. Nothing much happened around Greenwich, but it seemed like it always happened on his day off.

There wasn’t much to go on, but the first officer on the scene had pulled a card from the deceased’s wallet with the name of a big shot lawyer, on retainer to the Lambini family. One of them had a sprawling Roman villa in the area – an eyesore in the genteel suburban landscape. In the dead man’s hand they’d found a spent bullet. It would be hard to identify, but the prevailing idea was that it was a symbol of some kind, maybe a warning to others? Another officer had had the brilliant idea of flipping through the bible lying on the ground next to him – any fingerprints would now be smudged. The only clue the fumbling idiot had yielded were the words “And anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.
Confess your sins” underlined with a thick oily pencil. An eye for an eye? A tit for tat execution-style murder? Detective Johnson scribbled a note on his pad to remind himself to check for recent murders in the city. He knew for a fact there hadn’t been any in his jurisdiction. But he knew from experience that the family never messed around in their own backyard.

The one thing no one could figure out was the shoes. The guy was wearing a bow-tie, a black sash and an expensive suit – an Armani tux – yet on his feet were a pair of filthy Nikes, with holes in their soles. Go figure what the hell that was supposed to mean!

***


Ronald Merkin had felt his legs buckle, and before he knew what hit him, he lay sprawled by the side of the road, his mind filling with fog and his body refusing to respond to the simplest command like “Reach for the phone, NOW! Go on, reach, reach, REACH!” But by then his arm had felt like it belonged to someone else. It remained stuck, twisted beneath him and he could feel the blood stop flowing there already, but he couldn’t for the life of him make it move.

Why had he swallowed that drink at the Richardson’s? He hadn’t even checked his blood sugar before going out, and he’d left his insulin kit in his dressing room because it made an unsightly bulge in his tailor-made tuxedo. He hadn’t touched the hors d’oeuvres because he’d been mesmerized by the stunning brunette George introduced to him. When she said she was calling it a night, and he offered to take her home, she refused because she wanted to walk. He could have asked for her number; he was already feeling light-headed. But no, he insisted. Not alone, at night, in the deserted countryside.

This is it then, he thought. My last memory will be of a starlit sky in Connecticut, only a mile or so from my beame, with not a witness except an indifferent owl hooting nearby.

No. Not even an owl. The hooting stopped and in a quiet flutter, he heard the owl depart and a throbbing silence fill the emptiness left behind.

What’s that sound? Steps? Friend or foe? Do dangerous animals still exist in suburbia?

The sound neared, but Ronald couldn’t even turn his head in the direction it came from.

Less than a foot away from his head, the source of the noise stopped. A disheveled man looked down on him and kicked his shoulder. Not hard. Just to get a reaction.

“Hey man, you okay?”

Do I look okay? In his mind he was shouting, but no words came out.

“No, you’re not I guess. You look like shit man. Too much hooch I bet. Or maybe THEY got you. Is that it? Got me once too. Came down outta nowhere, put something in my head so I couldn’t think straight no more. Now there’s noises, people talking all the time. Is that what you got too?

“Not in the mood to talk, huh? Happens to me sometimes too. Tha’s okay. I can dig it.

“I guess you want to be alone, huh? No problem. Only thing, hope you don’t mind, is your shoes. If you’re not using ’em, I will. Mine’s got holes, big ones.”

Helpless to stop him, Ron felt the stranger remove his shoes, and in a pestilent clod, take his own off and slip them gently on his feet.

“There. That way you won’t get cold feet. Hey, that’s a good one. Cold feet. Get it?

“Here. I’ll leave this for you too. Doesn’t look like much – you probably think it’s just a scrunched up piece of metal, right? Well it’s not. It’s a Lone Ranger bullet, I swear. If you hold it in your hand – common man, keep your fingers closed – it’ll keep THEM from getting’ you again. You’ll see. When you’re feeling better, you’ll wanna thank me. But I’ll be long gone. Doesn’t pay to stay too long in one place.”

Chuckling to himself, the man walked away into the darkness. Emitting not a whimper, Ron was filled with a howl of despair only he could hear.

With his ear scrunched against the pavement beneath him, he felt the rumble of an approaching car before its headlights flooded the surrounding countryside. For a moment Ron was terrified it wouldn’t see him and he would get run over by it.

The car came to a screeching halt only a few feet away after it skidded to avoid him. The driver’s door opened and a woman jumped out screaming louder than her tires had.

“Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God...” Ron could tell from the way her feet slapped the pavement that she was wearing sensible shoes. When she came near enough he could smell her, he felt relieved. A mixture of soap, mothballs and strong mouthwash. She would know what to do.

Suddenly she was by his side, on her knees, reciting a well-known sequence of words.

“And their prayer offered in faith will heal the sick,
and the Lord will make them well.
And anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.
Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed…”

Normally Ron was known for his even temper. But if he’d been able to, he would have slapped some sense into the woman. Can’t you see it’s an ambulance I need? I won’t need to repent if you would just call one, RIGHT NOW! Please?

As though she’d heard his thoughts, the woman stopped praying and stood up. “We don’t believe in cell phones. But I wouldn’t call even if I had one. You should be ashamed of yourself. Roaming the countryside with the devil’s brew on your breath. I’ll pray for your soul.” She turned around and ran back to her car. Even though she wasn’t being any help, Ron panicked at the thought that she was going to leave him alone in the dark once more.

Within seconds she was back. There was hope yet. She deposited a heavy object on his chest. “Here. When you feel better, read this.

“The Lord’s word saved me If you let it, it will save your life too!”
The woman rushed off, got back in her car and in a squeal of tires, sped off to tend to what to her, no doubt, were more urgent matters. Ronald swore, on the bible, though not in a way the woman would have approved of.

One by one, the stars above him dimmed. His breathed only sporadically. One long difficult breath, then nothing for a while and then on their own it seemed to Ron, his lungs sucked in another load of oxygen and he was alive again, but for how much longer? Little by little, he stopped caring, or wanting to fight for his life. He just didn’t have the strength for it. Any moment all the stars would go out, and there was nothing Ronald could do to stop them. He felt himself slipping away into deep dark slumber.

Without any warning, a car flew by, kept on going and stopped. Almost as fast as it had gone by, it came back in reverse, in a professional-looking straight line.

Alert once more, Ronald saw a pair of shiny shoes walk briskly from the car toward him. A man bent down and peered at him, using a pen-sized flashlight. He placed his fingers on Ron’s wrist and said nothing.

He was taking his pulse! Finally someone with a rational response. Nearly a minute went by. He dropped the hand he was holding to the ground and took a cigarette from the inside pocket of his jacket. Still crouching, he exhaled a cloud of smoke and blew it in Ronald’s face wordlessly.

The way he stared at him, Ron thought the man was just going to watch him take his last breath.

At last, he put a hand inside Ron’s jacket and pulled out his wallet. Ronald remembered his medical I.D. was in it. Now the man would know he was a diabetic going into insulin shock. Maybe he would know what to do. If nothing else, he would call an ambulance.

Ron couldn’t see what he was fiddling with, but after a moment, he put Ron’s wallet back where he’d found it, and pulled out his cell phone. The last thing Ron heard were the first words that came out of his mouth: “Memo to self. Check paper in the morning. Find out if the guy – one Ronald Merkin – has any living relatives. Wrongful death suit? Make a change from my usual criminal cases.”


Steve’s comment:

This sentence: "Find out if the guy – one Ronald Merkin – has any living relatives. Wrongful death suit?"

Causes me problems. First, as I said, because it immediately makes my head jump to the suit he's wearing, but secondly, I realise now, because I've no idea what a 'wrongful death suit' is, anyway. I'm presuming, by the reference to the living relatives, that he's talking about somehow suing them for this man's death, but it makes little sense to me in the context. If he said something along the lines of 'find out if there are any living relatives I can slap a wrongful death suit on' or 'find out if there are any living relatives I can sue for wrongful death' I would at least understand immediately that he was a lawyer (which is the more important point) and blame my lack of comprehension of the charge on the American legal system (or the French one?). One thing I particularly like is the shininess of the shoes. I'd be tempted to add little gold decorative buckles.