The House

By William Malic

Finding a corpse is all too routine for our detective until he discovers it has been mummified. A magic mirror reveals HIS past. The chief suspect has multiple personalities. He is thrust into a macabre scene. Fishing for clues he recalls his fishing trips with his father which is part of the story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781365873508

Book preview

The House

The House

Chapter 1

Looking back through the register of memories stored in some obscure section of my brain I recalled many found recollections of my childhood experiences.  Perhaps the most vivid images that stir within my grey matter are the times I spent with my dad at the park while fishing.  Just to set the record straight, my dad hated fishing.  He hated baiting the hook, hated the slimy feel of the wriggling quarry as he struggled to extract the barb from its bleeding mouth when on occasion we actually caught something and most of all he hated eating fish.  For some reason we always had fish on Friday’s, Dad’s least favorite day when it came to meals, but his best day because it began the weekend.

As a young boy I was full of vinegar as my father would say and always ready for an adventure.  Slipping and sliding on the wet rocks and falling into the stream were no accident.  It was a skill I honed over the years with the zeal of a professional athlete.  Dad never knew I practiced the art.  It wasn’t because I loved getting wet, or skinning my knees; it was because dad would rescue me.  He didn’t admonish me for being clumsy or get upset.  He fished me out of the drink and with the careful eye of a physician checked me for broken bones and any other damage.  If I cried, often I had to fake the tears to cover up the grin of delight; he would wipe them away and calmly assure me I would live.  Dad wasn’t a doctor.  He worked hard in the foundry and the permanent stink of sweat never quite washed away.  To me it was the scent of a man and someday I wanted to be a man like my dad.

Besides falling into the water I enjoyed baiting the hook.  The poor sacrificial worm squirmed and its long cylindrical tube-like body with no limbs writhed as the sharp point of the hook pierced through its skin.  Earthworms do not have a nose, eyes, ears, or hands to gather sensory information about their environment. Instead, they depend on their prostomium and sensory receptors in their skin to feel their way through the soil.  Do they feel pain?  It wasn’t that I had a cruel streak.  I often rescued birds that had fallen from their nest or a lame rabbit and nursed them back to health.  For some reason I never quite understood why mom insisted I couldn’t set up my makeshift animal hospital in my room.  Those activities were relegated to the garage.

Back to the worms.  Most invertebrates, including lobsters and crabs boiled alive, do not feel pain because, unlike mammals, they do not have a big brain to read the signals.  As I understand it, earthworms don't have the hardware to process complex thoughts. There's no brain as such, just a simple nervous system, so although they react to being too dry, too wet or handled etc., they just can't have a concept of pain in the way more intelligent life forms do.

When it came to scaling and gutting a keeper I jumped right in, probably something my dad appreciated.  The gore didn’t bother me, something that would serve me well in later years.  Smelling like a wharf rat afterward was okay with me.  Mom always insisted I shower after a fishing trip and wouldn’t get too close until I did.  She did like to fry up the days catch and believe me nothing tasted better then something you caught yourself.  I guess that is a reversion to the gather and hunter days of our ancestors.  For dad it was a thick steak that most wetted his appetite.  He would eat the fish, reluctantly I am sure, because his little man caught it.  I always beamed from ear to ear when he called me his little man.  Though as I grew older I had wished he would have dropped the ‘little’ since I eventually grew taller then him.

Many times dad and I would just sit by the stream and wait for a fish to nibble.  Next to each other, not quite touching, we had this moment of bonding that had no equal.  If I really thought about it there were times when dad didn’t even bait the hook.  Fishing wasn’t about the fish.  It was a time to be together, to relax and to think.  I don’t know what dad thought about.  Maybe it was about me or mom or whatever.  It definitely wasn’t about work; he hated his job.  That was another thing I learned.  Dad worked to provide for his family.  I dreamt I would work someday at a job I liked.  On those fishing trips when we sat and thought, I was mostly thinking about adventure.  I might be a pirate one day relaxing after a hard day at pillaging.  I could be a mountain climber scaling the surrounding hills which in my mind were ten times higher than they really were.  Perhaps I could be an explorer unearthing archeological finds.  Mummies were my favorite.  Whatever the occasion, I had an encyclopedia of adventures to think about.

I think it was early spring when I first saw the house.  The day was a little balmy and the water was frigid.  There was no slipping and sliding that day.  I was adventurous but not a fool.  The spring trees were in flower and the leaves just barely emerging from their dormant stage.  For some trees flowering first is significant because if a mass of flowers come out together then this is likely to attract more insects and if at the same time there are no leaves it facilitates wind pollination. For my purpose this gave me a better line of site up the hill.  Normally the house would have been obscured by the foliage.  We had just settled down on a patch of grass to soak up some warmth from the sun.  Dad was studying the clouds.  He would look for formations that resembled animals or people.  That day the clouds weren’t cooperating.  I guess God wasn’t in a creative mood.  I wasn’t bored but being young and without much of an attention span I kept switching my gaze till for some reason the house grabbed my consideration.

It wasn’t a particularly memorable house.  The side we could see had a second story balcony and the first story was mostly windows.  The windows reflected the sky and clouds so there were no way to see inside the house.  It sat on top of a hill overlooking the park.  If someone had been looking out those windows they probably enjoyed a vista of the area that had to be breathtaking.  At my age then this wasn’t my concern.

I really don’t know when I began to wonder what was in the houses we would pass on our journeys.  Later as I grew older I often would imagine what was behind the curtained windows of some houses.  Who were the people, what were they doing and things like that?  Secrets lurked everywhere.  Sometimes those secrets were exposed but mostly they remained forever obscured by the walls, curtained windows or just the reflection of the outside.

That day I stared for a long time at that house.  My mind raced at the speed of a Jaguar XJ220.  Jaguar’s XJ220 was, at one time, the fastest production car on the planet. I was into sport cars too.  Jaguar totally outdid themselves in 2009, when a prototype version of its popular XF-R model was able to achieve an insane top-speed of 225 miles per hour.

I think I was breaking the land speed record that they. Who was in that house?  Where they watching me as well?  Were they nice people?  Or were they aliens?

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Chapter 2

Time has a way of rushing forward at breakneck speed.  Persons in every age group wonder why time seems to move so much faster than it did in their pasts. It seems as if there is never enough time to get everything done and that the situation only gets worse.  For myself I would often sit quietly and ponder the matter. This turned about to be a wise decision, because I think I found the solution. It's really quite simple. It all has to do with anticipation and retrospection.

When I was in school I looked forward to the long summer vacation, which always seems to be an eternity away. Finally, it arrives. Then, almost before they blink an eye, it's over and I am back in school again.  When anticipated, each new significant event seems to be excruciatingly far away. However, after the event, we regularly look back and exclaim. Did it really happen that long ago?

I couldn’t wait to finish school, go to college, find a job and move out of my parents’ home.  The later childhood goal came with mixed emotions.  It would mean less time spent with my father, the only dread I had about growing up. For me, the high point of my life was joining the police force right where I had been born and raised.  Perhaps the longest three months of my life, it seemed more like three years, was waiting to be accepted and sent to the academy. - The shortest two years of my life, because I was having so much fun was training and starting out as a beat cop.  Making detective happened only yesterday it seems and today I am the lead investigator in the department.

I of course have had many other milestones in my life, which are all rapidly hurtling away from me.  Still meeting the special one, marriage, my own children and seeing them off to college was not yet catapulted through my life.  If accumulating milestones is truly the secret of the accelerating years, what do we do about it? Basically nothing; we just have to accept it. However, this is not necessarily a negative. True, the good things are coursing away faster and faster into the past. But so are the not-so-good things; like the loss of my parents.

Take the biblical King Solomon. He called his wise men together and presented them with a challenge. Find me a cure for depression. They meditated for a long time, and then gave him the following advice. Your Majesty, make yourself a ring and have engraved thereon the words: This too shall pass. He had the ring made and wore it constantly. Every time he felt sad or depressed, he looked at the inscription, which tended to lift his spirits.

This too shall pass. Indeed, it shall. Whether positive or negative, nothing in life lasts forever, even if it sometimes feels as if it will. We are certain of this because we know even life itself doesn't last forever.  We are born to die.  I know, because I see it all too often.  I am a homicide detective.

**************************************

Standing inside the house I was peering out the window.  The whole wall was nothing but glass on top of a broad sill.  Perched high on top of a hill the vista was captivating, a view that I found almost divine.  Still early spring, the trees were nearly bare of leaves.  A few showed signs of buds ready to burst forward with greenery that would partially obscure the view.  Purple, white and yellow flowers graced isolated early flowering bushes and shrubs.  Stretching below in the valley was a blanket of newly emerged grass not long before covered with the last snow fall.  A ribbon of black snaked through the brilliant emerald hue.  A stream moved swiftly, tumbling over moss covered rocks, now swelled by the spring thaw.  Further on there was another grayish path bordering the stream and following its natural contour.  The soft shelled jogging trail was sparsely occupied at this hour.  The few runners passing below me were oblivious to what was inside the house.  If they had looked up they would have only seen the reflection of the billowing white clouds lumbering across a sky that was vividly blue.  The house’s secret was safe from curious eyes.

Penny for your thoughts? interrupted the serenity of the scene.  Newly promoted detective John Sullivan stood behind me peering over my shoulder.  Great view, right?

I didn’t move.  Not sure if I was perturbed by the interruption of my meditation or glad he brought me back to the matter at hand.  I didn’t answer.  He sighed slightly.  I wasn’t ready to look away.  This was the house of my childhood infatuation.  It seemed like yesterday I had been down there looking up at the house on the hill.  Yet it was a long time since I had spent time with my father by that stream.  I missed him.

There almost ready to move the body.  Forensic has all they need.  They want to get it to the morgue and begin the autopsy as soon as possible.  They need your permission to proceed. Sullivan rattled on.  "Time's not standing still.  We need to move on.

"What’s the rush, I thought.  It’s not like she is going anywhere.  From what I can see she has been here a long time already.  It won’t make much difference if we wait a while."

Did you hear me, sir, Sullivan said more insistently.

Yeah, go ahead get HER moved, I responded.  "Why did he say ‘it’ when referring to the body of the women they had discovered a few hours before?"  I turned to face him.  He stood still watching me.  Go ahead.  Move her.

Don’t you want to observe the transfer? Sullivan choked.

I flicked my fingers at him, Go this is your show.  Sullivan puffed delighted he was trusted to supervise the operation.  You might as well start taking charge.  It won’t be the last time.  The first is always the worst.  You know the procedure.

"The procedure, I thought.  Is that what life or death is?  A procedure.  I’d seen some strange ones on this job but this took the cake.

Sir, May I ask what you were looking at? Sullivan suddenly turned and asked before leaving.

I turned back to the window, leaning on the sill, I always wondered what the people in this house saw out of these windows.

Sir? Sullivan raised his eye brows and looked out of the window.

Nothing important. I said.  I used to go down there with my Dad, a long time ago.  It brought back memories.

Like that father and son by the crick? Sullivan pointed.

I hadn’t noticed the pair, too consumed by the totality of the scene.  In deed there were a young boy and a man fishing along the stream.  The boy was antsy and not being too careful. The man sat quietly watching.

There he goes, Sullivan laughed.  The boy slipped on the rocks and fell into the rushing water.  Luckily it was not too deep there and the swirling eddies weren’t too strong.  The father calmly set his pole down and reached for the boy’s hand pulling him to dry ground.  That was lucky.  I would have hated like hell to have to have an accidental drowning to investigate.  Sullivan huffed.  The old man should not let his boy so near the water.  That kid is pure clumsy.

No, John, I said.  He just wanted his dad to save him.  Sullivan looked shocked.  It’s an old trick to get attention.  I did it a hundred times myself.  I watched as the father checked the boy over.  It looks like he skinned his shins.  Nice touch kid.  Here come the tears.  He’s good.  See how the old man is doting over him.

More like he needs a good spanking, Sullivan snorted.   But I guess fathers can’t do that these days.  The kid better watch out or the next time he may find himself in real trouble.

The next time, will come, and he will make sure it is in shallow water, and his father is nearby.  This kid isn’t a fool.  Water is still pretty cold though.  He must have really wanted his father to pay attention to him.  I watched the pair as they settled in the sun to get the boy warm and let his pant legs dry out.

Do you know them? Sullivan asked.

Once, maybe, I said cryptically, ‘but that was a long time ago.  See that?  The boy is looking up at us."

Do you think he can see us watching them?

Not possible, I said.  The reflection of the window won’t allow it.  He is wondering what’s up here however.  It was like I was looking in a mirror, an old mirror from the past.  Sorry kid, there are no aliens here today.

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Chapter 3

Sir, Sullivan here, I heard on my cell.  I am still at the morgue.  I believe you will want to get down here.

I’ll read the report, I answered.  Is it that important?

Routine!  The simple definition is a regular way of doing things in a particular order.  Or it could be a boring state or situation in which things are always done the same way.  Investigation of death particularly under suspicious circumstances was never routine.  Each case had its on unique characteristics.  One thing was certain.  The woman was dead, real dead, and dead for a long time.  There had not been any evidence of forced entry.  Matter of fact the doors had been locked from the inside.  Nothing was out of order.  Or was it?  The house was immaculate.  Nothing was out of place and it looked like it had been cleaned yesterday, maybe even the day they were called to the residence.

A bunch of kids had been seen hanging around by the neighbors.  They weren’t doing anything wrong but old people, the neighbors, get paranoid when young ones show up uninvited.  They were peeking in the windows the report said.  When they hightailed it out of there like they had seen a ghost the neighbors called back.  The first car to respond waited for back up.  An officer went to the front door after the second car arrived and his back up circled around the house but the footing was bad.  The house sat on the edge of the hill and it was almost impossible to get to the rear of the house.  There didn’t look like there was an entrance back there.  One of the neighbors who called met the man as he came back from the side of the house.  The nosey neighbor said the boys had been on the other side.  The officer at the front door didn’t get a response from his ringing the doorbell.  The neighbor also told the policeman he was sure no one was at home.  Some people had been there but had left a few days before.  He had no idea where they went or when they would return.  They weren’t the social type and never spoke with the neighbors.  The second officer stood on a planter and looked in a window.  That was when he called in for the detectives.

Since they were unable to locate a key holder a warrant was called in to allow forcibly entry into the house.  Once inside the team searched the entire house.  Everything was in order, everything but the body of a woman lying on a bed in a