Better Off Dead

By V. J. Black

From award-winning author VJ Black comes the story of Riley Alexander, a frustrated novelist turned day laborer who decides to write-and star in-his own revenge script, one with a decidedly literary twist.

A haunted book tour unravels, and a bookish mystery unfolds...

The girl on the bridge seemed to appear out of nowhere. Her eyewit

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hungry Hill Books
• Release date: Jun 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781733085632

Book preview

First Edition published by Hungry Hill Books 2020

Copyright © VJ Black 2020

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-7330856-2-5 (TPB)

ISBN: 978-1-7330856-3-2 (EB)

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

Typeset in Baskerville

Cover by Berge Design

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020909484

Ordering Information Contact:

Hungry Hill Books LLC

www.hungryhillbooks.com

The blinding Florida sun formed an aura behind the waif’s head, framing it like a halo. But this is no saint, thought Detective Simone Verot. It was an hour past daybreak, and the crime scene was already delaying traffic on the frequently congested Bridge of Lions.

A shout came from the water below. Got a shoe here, pretty bad shape, could be his.

Keep looking, Simone shouted back.

The waif might have been pretty in another life, before the drugs and homelessness and Heaven knows what else. Simone tilted her head and considered her in detail: a naive, vacant stare from ice blue eyes, smudged and sunken cheeks, a sensuous mouth (made less so by the pierced lower lip), bobbed auburn hair, rail thin but with delicate curves beneath the tattered, sleeveless Army jacket with the name ALEXANDER stamped above the pocket. She looked about thirty years old. She was probably twenty.

OK. We got some blood, an Army jacket with no sleeves, and now a shoe. All we need is a body.

The waif drew her slight frame up within the jacket. It’s like I told the officer, Detective. He was crying out and throwing things over the bridge, and then the car came rushing up. It was dark but I’m sure it was him.

Alexander.

The waif nodded. Yes, Riley Alexander.

That’s how the blood stain got here, from the hit and run? She nodded in the direction of a dark spot on the pavement.

I have no idea.

And you say he gave you the jacket last night?

Yes, said he wouldn’t be needing it anymore. It was his father’s, from Afghanistan.

All because you were nice to him. The sarcasm dripped from Simone’s lips. The waif looked away. Simone knew she was walking a fine line.

So, tell me, Miss... Simone glanced down at her notepad.

The waif sighed, interpreting the Detective’s sudden memory loss as a sign of disrespect. Delacroix. Eve.

"Right. So, Miss Delacroix, you offered some hospitality—she spoke the word with contempt—to Mr. Alexander last night, is that correct?"

The arctic eyes flashed and narrowed. Look, Detective, he was depressed, talking about killing himself. I met him in a bar, he was with this friend of his, they weren’t getting along. We left together, he told me his story, I let him stay with me. When I thought I heard him go out in the middle of the night, I got up and tried to follow him, and I caught up to him here. Then I ran down to the city and found the officer, and I told him what happened.

And you didn’t get the license number, or the make of the car, either.

I told you, it was dark.

Simone huffed, frustrated. Eve Delacroix surely had a story of her own, but that was immaterial. If this Riley Alexander were indeed suicidal, the reasons would become clear soon enough.

The detective’s radio crackled, and she excused herself to answer. Eve drifted to the concrete wall and was watching the dredging operation intently when Simone came alongside her and said, We contacted the older brother who lives here in town. He says Riley was estranged from the family, pretty much deserted his wife, quit the family business, and took to the streets almost a year ago. Wrote them a letter not long after that, said he had nothing left to live for. He’s been dead since then, as far as they’re concerned. The brother doesn’t seem to care if we find the body or not.

The young woman turned her head and looked straight into Simone’s eyes. It was unsettling, a look of calm and deep understanding, of wisdom beyond her years, or perhaps, of resignation.

I’m sorry, but we’ll need that jacket, Simone added. We might at least be able to get a DNA sample to match the blood evidence.

Eve slipped the jacket from her shoulders and handed it over. Simone confirmed her first impression that the girl’s slight form was shapely if not quite sensual, and she moved gracefully, as if impervious to the effects of an undoubtedly hard life. The flourish of an elaborate tattoo was visible on her chest through the open collar of her shirt, and a bracelet of briars was similarly drawn in brown and red ink around her wrist. Simone tried to find some compassion for this poor girl, but, being a striking woman herself and mindful of her advancing years, any sympathy she might have had quickly melted into jealousy.

Simone reached into one of the jacket pockets and removed an empty plastic prescription bottle. Interesting, she said to herself, studying the label.

I guess you know where to find me if you need anything else, said Eve, walking away, her hands thrust in the pockets of her threadbare jeans.

Simone looked up. Tell me something, she said. You liked this guy, didn’t you.

The girl stopped, turned back, and ran her fingers through her short hair. He was no one special.

Simone squinted in the early morning sunshine and tilted her head once more, irritated, her emotions disturbed, her mind confused. May I ask why you bothered to get mixed up in this then?

Eve shook her head. Story of my life, she said. Then she smiled faintly and turned away. Simone watched her curiously as she descended down the bridge all the way to Plaza de la Constitution and into the heart of the Ancient City, where at last she disappeared from view.

The boundaries which divide Life from

Death are at best shadowy and vague.

Who shall say where the one ends,

and where the other begins?

Edgar A. Poe, The Premature Burial

1

The pills were spilled out on the table, and Riley had reasons to swallow them all. The bitterness with which he carefully counted out his misfortunes both angered and amused him. Such is the sad irony shared by all suicides, to embrace both passion and despair in equal measure.

He had snatched the amber plastic bottle from the medicine cabinet of the abandoned rental house a half-hour earlier. The label indicated it belonged to one Emilio Alvarez, the previous tenant. Alvarez left in quite a hurry, or so it seemed, and with three months’ rent in arrears, leaving a lot more than just his Xanax behind.

The house was located inland, a few blocks from the ocean, but it suffered from decades of neglect—a sagging, rotting husk of its former self. Now, in the center of this termite infested junk pile sat Riley Alexander, alone at the kitchen table, pondering the history of the house’s decline into oblivion: a well-intentioned owner with an unexpected financial setback, upkeep for the place becoming unaffordable, a For Sale sign bleached and peeling. Years of slow decay in the relentless Florida sun. A long parade of renters, students, vagabonds, vandals, roaches. And finally Alvarez, present whereabouts unknown, an under-evolved life form himself, from the looks of things.

It was an appropriate setting for what Riley was about to do.

He shuffled to the sink and turned the faucet. No water, of course. He laughed, not hearing the slow crunch of tires on the gravel drive outside.

Scooping the pills back into the prescription bottle, he paused to steady himself, waiting for the pain from the previous day’s accident to pass. He tapped his fingers lightly around the gauze bandage and winced. The nine stitches cost him nearly all the cash he had left. The scar would be permanent, the doctor said, as if it mattered. Maybe, the doctor added, when your novels finally get published, it will help you tell the story of how you went from being a day laborer—who was nearly killed by a chunk of concrete jack-hammered off the Bridge of Lions—to a bestselling author.

He thought he heard voices somewhere. Or was it just the ringing in his head?

His most recent employer, Hammers and Hands, had sent him to clear the place out so the junk could be carried off to the landfill and another lowlife could move in. It was a fifty-dollar payday and hardly worth it; was he supposed to drag all the broken furniture out to the front lawn all alone? No way, he reasoned to himself, not with this headache.

He tried to stand and sat down again. The head throbbed, fracturing his thoughts into fragments, leaving only raw emotion. He was having difficulty directing the anger now; the pain diluted its force. The need of the moment was to find something wet with which to choke the pills down in one spectacular swallow. After fighting the temptation to end it all for so long, the time had finally come, though he wondered if the handful of pills would be enough to do the job.

He dropped his head to the table and thrust the plastic bottle into the pocket of his father’s frayed and faded army jacket, the one with the sleeves torn off that he wore everywhere, despite the heat. Another irony, and another reason—his father had died suddenly of heart failure after retiring from a military career, when Riley was just a teen. He re-counted the pills; at least there would be no one to mourn him.

He closed his eyes, not realizing that they were already in the house.

The mind ran on as the body rested. Indeed, there were good reasons to do it now. He had counted the pills several times, wishing he had more, replaying the injustices perpetrated against him to summon up his courage. Aside from the nine small but extraordinarily expensive reasons sewn into his forehead that had left him completely broke, there were easily much bigger ones.

There were the four wasted years in college, during which he had earned modest recognition for his writing but no degree.

There were six more wasted years in the family business, the futile confrontations with his scheming stepbrother, the series of foolish humiliations at the hands of people he never should have trusted.

In the same category, there was his excruciatingly beautiful but unfaithful ex-wife, a tight little ball of narcissism and paranoia, wired to fear everything one day and nothing the next, an opportunist who had not loved him, but what she thought he might someday be. On more than one occasion over the past months, in spite of all she had done to him, he still longed for her in the night, and hated himself for it.

Twenty reasons in all, almost one for each pill. The first nine formed a scar that could heal in time. The others were open wounds that never would. And he hadn’t even considered his three unpublished, unwanted, prejudiciously rejected novels.

Still, he thought of himself as a writer. The pathetic absurdity of it! Yet that was his answer whenever someone asked, like the doctor had yesterday. It was laughable, really, because of the inevitable follow-up question. What have you written? Well, nothing you’ve read, he would say, like so many great unpublished novelists do. But the shabby clothes and calloused hands told the real story of his failure.

He lifted his head and scanned the room, the pulse behind his eyes growing temporarily tolerable. Alvarez had left very little behind other than broken furniture and garbage. Riley was able to stand now, and he crossed the kitchen slowly. The cabinets were more or less empty, and he reasoned sadly that there was not much hope of finding a can of stale beer lying around. The whole place was dusty, bone dry. The heat was suffocating. Suddenly dizzy, he slumped against the wall, holding his throbbing head.

He wouldn’t see or hear the two men enter the room until they were almost upon him.

He stuck his finger in the bottle and yanked out one of the pills. Taken a few at a time he could choke them down without any water. He popped the first one in his mouth without too much resistance. He had already swallowed four when a rotund Latino man appeared in the doorway, followed by a shorter companion of equal proportions. They moved quickly despite their bulk, seizing their prey by the arms and hoisting him to his feet with one clean jerk.

Hey now, take it easy guys…

Vayamos, Alvarez! barked the larger one. They dragged him quickly across the room.

No, no, no. Big mistake here, I’m not Alvarez, the victim protested. "Alexander—Riley Alexander. I just work here. Look, it’s written right here on the jacket. ALEXANDER. See?"

Un hombre muerto! shouted the big man.

Riley rolled, then closed, his eyes. He sighed and shuffled out of the house in the grip of the two hefty Latinos. Nothing’s ever easy, he mumbled to himself, prompting a slap to the back of the head from a meaty hand.

A dead man. What a joke.

=

Minutes later, Riley found himself crammed in between his captors on the bench seat of a ridiculous blue pickup truck detailed in orange flames with tiny wheels in the front, rumbling out of town on Highway 207. He determined from the snatches of conversation he was able to understand that these gentlemen were named Hector and Pepe, that they thought they had abducted Emilio Alvarez, and that they were trundling down the road to execute a judgment on behalf of another. It explained Alvarez’ sudden departure from his rented home, and maybe his prescription for Xanax as well. Sudden panic attacks are justified when the goon squad is chasing you around town.

So, this guy Alvarez, he’s a tall white guy like me? Riley quipped.

Pepe responded with a sharp elbow to the ribs, but the Xanax was making Riley woozy by now, and it didn’t hurt much.

Hector spun the steering wheel (formed by a chrome plated chain) and downshifted onto a gravel road that soon turned to hard dirt. Scrub trees flanked them on either side, and a cloud of dust filled the cab, making Riley cough. As they bounced along, he contemplated the fate that awaited him, likely from a big knife or a single bullet. With any luck, the Xanax might knock him out first.

This makes twenty-four, he muttered. Or is it twenty-five? He started to laugh.

Hector stood on the brakes and the truck slid violently to a stop. Callate! he shouted through the wall of dust.

Riley’s eyes were stinging, his throat dry as the road. This is it Riley thought. The end of the line.

The big man paused. Quinientos? He was smiling, gold capped front teeth gleaming.

Five hundred… Riley ruminated. "Wait a minute, you mean dolares? You want five hundred bucks to spare my life?"

Sí.

Yes, well, I have a problem there. See, I was just thinking about all the reasons I have to kill myself. This little ride in the country makes two dozen. I suppose you could add another…I’m broke.

Hector appeared confused, then suddenly crestfallen. They considered each other as the hot metal of the truck tingled.

Tienes drogas? Hector offered at last.

Riley sighed. His eyelids were getting heavy now. No, can’t help you there either. Unless you would be interested in a few dozen…

Pepe shouted something unintelligible and crashed an elbow into Riley’s wounded forehead. The shocking pain of the blow blinded him momentarily. In the haze of semi-consciousness he was able to comprehend the sober truth that these people were dangerous opportunists and capable of anything. They would take their employer’s money and whatever they could from Riley before dumping him in a ditch in this godforsaken corner of the county. The crisis stirred a survival instinct deep within him that he hadn’t expected to be there. As the pain in his head settled into a heavy throb, he felt himself becoming angry. It was one thing for him to take his own life, but quite another to allow himself to go out shamefully in the hands of these punks.

Pepe yanked Riley out of the truck and dropped him on the hard dirt. He plucked out Riley’s wallet and studied its contents. As Hector came around the truck Pepe was shouting in Spanish, and they stood side by side talking excitedly. Riley turned his head but all he could see was their fat boots. The truck was idling, swirling exhaust into Riley’s nose. He turned his head again, more awake now and nearly choking, then realized that the big boys were talking more softly, and he understood: after seeing his driver’s license, it finally occurred to them that this wasn’t Emilio Alvarez after all.

Riley managed to get to his feet and extended his bound hands. Por favor? he pleaded.

Pepe was the first to move, lunging forward at an awkward angle. Riley saw the anger in his round face and prepared for the attack. But it was quickly apparent that he was heading for the truck instead, perhaps for the weapon they intended to use on him. Riley instinctively darted back and dove headfirst into the open door of the cab, hauling himself inside just ahead of the charging Pepe. With both feet Riley kicked out the swinging door, knocking Pepe off balance. Hector was coming fast, and Riley scooted into the driver’s seat, threw the shifter into drive, and stomped on the gas. He ran over something but kept going down the road, raising so much dust he couldn’t see behind him. After a quarter mile or so he stopped and waited for the air to clear. For the moment, it seemed he was home free.

Quickly searching the vehicle, he found a hunting knife in the glove compartment and used it to cut the rope from his wrists. He paused to calm his racing heart and considered what to do next. The pounding in his head made it hard to think, but he had to do something fast. He had no idea where he was or where the road would lead, but he felt sure he could get back to town going back the way they had come. He made a three-point turn and headed slowly up the road.

In the distance up ahead, Hector was kneeling on the hard dirt beside Pepe, who was howling in pain, cradling his crushed right hand, which Riley must have run over at the start of his getaway. When they saw the truck they began to shout, and Hector pulled Pepe off the ground, heading for the woods. Their fear fueled Riley’s anger, which now crashed over him like a wave, electrifying every nerve. He floored the gas pedal. Pepe, in a state of hysterical panic, tripped over his own feet and brought Hector down with him. Riley turned the wheel slightly and closed in, the roar of the motor filling his ears, screaming vengeance.

They weren’t going to make it. Too fat to get up and out of the way in time, they lifted their hands and cried for mercy. Riley saw the terror in their eyes and slammed on the brake, swerving wildly to avoid hitting them, one hand on the shifter—but it was too late to stop. There was an ugly, violent thump and Riley’s chest struck the steering wheel as the truck tilted and rocked to a halt. Dust was in his eyes and nose, his lungs ached with every abbreviated breath. Dizzy with pain and an overwhelming rush of emotion that he couldn’t quite understand (hate? fear? sadness?), he slumped on the seat and blacked out.

When he regained consciousness after minutes or hours, he was alone in the truck on the road, the engine still running. The knife was still on the passenger side floor, and the sun was still high and hot above him. His body shivered once as he raised himself to the sitting position. Trembling, he shifted into gear and slowly advanced along the road, never taking his eyes off the hood, for fear of seeing what he had done.

In a few minutes he came to the gravel road, then back to the highway. In town, he left the truck in a 24-hour Wal-Mart parking lot and stumbled away, not looking back.

=

The rental house in which Riley lived was not much different from that of Emilio Alvarez, a furnished four-room wreck a few blocks from Flagler College, a jewel in the crown of an out-of-town slumlord who had probably never seen the property. The rental company was not remiss about sending late payment notices, however, and that’s what Riley thought he saw tacked to the front door as he mounted the creaky steps. It turned out to be a note from Pinto, his compadre in daily labor for the last several weeks, the same who had recklessly applied his jackhammer to the bridge on the previous day, rocketing a chunk of concrete into Riley’s forehead. Pinto was shiftless but endearing, and no doubt plagued by guilt since the accident. The note offered free drinks at the usual place if Riley could forgive him and show up at the appointed time. The invitation threw yet another wrinkle into Riley’s half-hearted suicide strategy.

Crap, he said to himself. There was no question that he would go, or Pinto would be emotionally scarred for life. But that was OK. One more night on the town with the only friend he had left in the world couldn’t hurt.

He tore the note from the door and tramped inside, exhausted as much from the long walk back as from the attempt on his life. Flopping on the scratchy fabric of the well-worn sofa, he closed his eyes to think. The pain in his head returned immediately, and he was too sore and overtired to process clear thoughts. There was one recurring image he couldn’t shake—the terrified faces of Hector and Pepe, would-be assassins upon whom the tables had tragically turned. Had he killed them? He couldn’t be sure, since he had refused to look. If they were still there when he returned to consciousness, they surely hadn’t been making any noise. Perhaps it would become clear if and when the story would appear in the newspaper, maybe as early as tomorrow. Or, if he had been seen, when the cops caught up with him. But he would be long gone by then anyway.

A twinge of regret pierced Riley’s soul and he bolted upright on the sofa. A sudden convulsion of anguish doubled him over, and he fell to his knees, weeping uncontrollably. His bruised ribs ached with each heave of his chest, and his eyes hurt for squeezing out tears, almost as much as his head. What had become of his life? Was it possible that he had actually wanted to kill those people? If there had been any question whether to end his miserable existence before, there certainly was none now.

A random thought occurred to him that brought an intermittent calm. The watch, he muttered aloud. He raised himself and shoved the sofa back on the old oak floor.

The watch. A gift from his mother before she died, when he first went to work for the family business. She had been so pleased that he had given up the vain pursuit of writing for a more practical vocation. He had almost forgotten he had it, it had been hidden under the floorboards so long, a gift both cherished and despised. He could never sell it, and yet he could barely look at it, for it reminded him of what happened later at Crocker Construction, his raw deal, his stepbrother’s treachery…. But now, he thought it could be used for good.

Opening the box, he removed the protective cloth and held the watch up in a shaft of late afternoon sunlight. The crystal glittered in an arc across the ceiling. He charged himself with one more duty, kneeling there alone in the room: he would find a worthy person, someone in dire need who had been wronged as he had been so many times. He would give that person the watch. It would bring several hundred dollars if pawned, at least, he guessed. It would be a selfless act, an attempt to reverse the awful deed of the last few hours. And then, he could leave the planet, his conscience cleared, prepared to meet his Maker, if there were one.

Resigned but resolute, Riley got ready to go and meet Pinto.

=

Scarlett O’Hara’s was one of Riley’s favorite places. The historic wooden building in the heart of the old city exuded a charm that appealed to locals and tourists alike, with