Murder Garden

By Ron Fritsch

Ted discovers his boyfriend Warren in their backyard garden—dead. Ted soon learns he's a suspect in Warren's murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Asymmetric Worlds
• Release date: Jan 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798985072624

Ron Fritsch

Ron Fritsch grew up on a farm in northern Illinois. He graduated from the University of Illinois and Harvard Law School. He lives in Chicago with his partner of many years, David Darling. Asymmetric Worlds has previously published six award-winning novels by Fritsch: Promised Valley Rebellion, Promised Valley War, Promised Valley Conspiracy, Promised Valley Peace, Elizabeth Daleiden on Trial and His Grandfather’s House.

Book preview

The Characters

Sylvia Carrington , a wealthy person

Tim Conway, a detective with the Chicago Police Department

Darrel Hadley, Warren Hadley’s brother, Rose Hadley’s son

Rose Hadley, Darrel and Warren Hadley’s mother

Warren Hadley, Darrel Hadley’s brother, Rose Hadley’s son

Athena Linden, Ted Linden’s sister, Idella Linden’s daughter

Idella Linden, Athena and Ted Linden’s mother

Ted Linden, Idella Linden’s son, Athena Linden’s brother

Vernon Trent, Ted Linden’s best friend

Henry Turner, the head of a large bank’s accounting department

Chapter One

Thursday, August 4, 1966

It was the day my life broke apart like history into eras. On one side of the fracture lay, in ruins, what had been. On the other loomed, unknowable, what was to come.

When I left for work that morning, Warren told me he’d make supper for us. I got home near six o’clock, as I usually did. When I reached the kitchen, I could see he hadn’t started anything yet. That was okay, I thought. I’d take him out to eat instead.

I knew he’d insist we go to an inexpensive place to save me money. My friend Vernon Trent didn’t refer to me as tightwad Ted for no reason at all. I’d say the money didn’t matter, but I’d give in nevertheless. Any place Warren would choose for our supper would have something I’d like—most of all because I’d be with him.

I couldn’t find him in the house. I discovered why when I stepped through the rear kitchen doorway, down the back steps and into my garden. He was slumped on one of the two lounge chairs I kept on the brick patio in the garden. As soon as I saw him, I could tell he’d been murdered.

Thursday, August 4, 1966

Somebody had slashed his throat with the largest knife I had in my kitchen. It lay on the patio below the near side of the lounge chair.

Lying on the patio on the other side of the chair was the book I’d bought for him two days earlier, Isaac Asimov’s From Earth to Heaven. Warren had wanted to be a scientist. He’d hoped to do research and make important discoveries. At the time of his death he still hadn’t decided where to focus his efforts, but he was only nineteen.

The sun—the sky was cloudless that day in Chicago—had caked the blood splattered on the knife, the book, the closest phlox, which were in full bloom then, and Warren’s nearly naked body. He’d gotten a light tan in the spring. Afterwards, he’d expose himself to the sun every day he could, usually in the morning, but only enough to maintain the color. That’s how I knew he’d been killed before two that afternoon.

He'd been reading on the lounge chair in the shade of the apple tree our neighbors to the east had in their backyard. But after two in early August, that part of the patio would’ve been in full sun. If Warren had still been alive then, he would’ve moved his chair to the west side of the patio, to read in the shade of our other next-door neighbors’ rose of Sharon.

Using the back of my hand like a child, I attempted to stop the tears rolling down my face. I imagined the killer had located the murder weapon in my kitchen, come out the back door, approached Warren from behind without making a sound audible above the light breeze and birdsong, and accomplished the murder with one forceful laceration.

Thursday, August 4, 1966

I called the police from the telephone in my kitchen. Somebody, I struggled to say, murdered the man I share my home with.

How do you know, the officer taking my call asked, he’s been murdered?

He’s dead. He’s in our garden. He’s covered with blood. Somebody slit his throat with one of my kitchen knives.

One of your kitchen knives?

Whoever did it left the knife on the patio. It’s covered with blood.

Somebody left one of your kitchen knives on your patio covered with blood?

I assumed the mockingbird I’d reached had guessed the victim and I were gay. I doubted, though, he’d use that word to describe us.

I’m warning you, he said, this better not be a prank.

This isn’t a prank.

I’d successfully kept him from detecting in my voice the state I was in. I was glad he couldn’t see my tears.

I’m telling you, he continued, the guy in your garden better be dead.

He’s dead.

Or you’re gonna face charges for making a false police report.

He’s dead.

What’s the address of this murder garden?

Thursday, August 4, 1966

Within a minute or two after I hung up the telephone I could hear the sirens of the squad cars on their way to my house. I lived south and east of the police station at Halsted and Addison. In those days the area was known as New Town.

Two of the squad cars stopped on the street in front of my house. I could hear another in the alley behind my garage. Like agitated bees emerging from their hives, neighbors came out of their houses and apartment buildings to discover what the commotion was all about.

When I opened my front door, I confronted four officers with their guns drawn.

Get your hands in the air! the first of them yelled.

My hands rose above my head like a couple of jacks popping out of their boxes.

I don’t have a gun, I said.

Shut the fuck up, the lead officer barked. He was a short, skinny man who wore thick glasses and appeared to be in his fifties. I’ll do the talking. Turn around now and keep your hands raised. Take us to this so-called murder garden. We’re gonna see for ourselves the dead man you say you found in it.

As he poked my ribs with the muzzle of his pistol like an elephant using her trunk to prod her calf, I led him and the other officers through my living room, what would’ve been my dining room if I hadn’t turned it into a weight-lifting room, and my kitchen and the back door.

When I descended the steps to the backyard, I could hear the officer with the gun against my back take a deep breath.

He was down to his underpants, he said. All he was wearing was his underpants.

Those are running shorts, I said, already refusing to keep my mouth shut.

My backyard garden was enclosed and private. My house and garage were at either end of it, and tall wooden fences, covered in the summer with ivy like green quilted blankets, stood on either side of it.

The lead officer glanced at me and snickered. I wonder if he was doing something nasty out here—with some other guy the killer caught them in the middle of.

I could feel the lead officer’s pistol against my back again.

He laughed. Would that be you? You came home from work and caught them in the act out here, two queers fucking and sucking?

I hadn’t had a previous occasion to discover how rude Chicago police officers could be, but I can’t say I hadn’t been warned.

He wasn’t ready to stop either. We had one of these fag-murder cases a few years ago. I don’t have to tell you that sort of thing goes on in this neighborhood. I remember it well. The boyfriend did it. All his lawyer could do was try to keep him from having his ass fried in the electric chair. So she told the judge the boyfriend went temporarily insane when he saw what was going on—and realized what a fool he’d been for not suspecting the asshole who was living off him was a whore. I wonder if it’ll be any different this time around.

He looked me up and down.

You own this house? he asked.

I was still wearing the suit I’d put on that morning before I went to my job. The bank I work for and I own the house, I replied. I pay on the mortgage every month. I nodded toward Warren. I put his name on the deed when he came here to live with me.

The skinny officer pointed his pistol at Warren. You were paying for him to live and sleep with you here?

I have a good job. Warren was a student at UIC. His family had no money to put him through college, so I was helping him.

The officer nodded. It all adds up. If I were you, when the detective gets here, I’d just admit what I did. It’ll save everybody a lot of time and bother. They might appreciate it and not go so hard on you. It’ll help keep this out of the papers and off the television news too.

He noticed Asimov’s most recent book on the patio. Despite the blood, he could read the title.

It made him laugh again. I don’t think they take fags in heaven.

That isn’t a religious book, I said.

With that title, it ain’t a religious book?

It’s about science. I nodded toward Warren. He wanted to be a scientist. But he hadn’t decided yet which particular kind of scientist he wanted to be.

The officer who’d laughed at what he’d found in my garden shook his head. "All the sciences on earth and angels in heaven, I’m sorry to say, ain’t gonna bring him back to life."

June 1965

I’d met Warren fourteen months earlier, on the first Saturday after Memorial Day. I’d included in my afternoon run a stop at the Belmont Rocks. The Rocks in the name of the location were the staircase-like rows of limestone the builders of Chicago, having drained swamps and leveled dunes, had emplaced along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan to keep its water out of their city—except where they chose, in their wisdom, to let it in.

The Belmont Rocks, which included the grassy area between the stone revetment and Lake Shore Drive, were a place gay people—in those days, mostly male and white gay people—claimed as their own. Straight folks usually didn’t need a long time to realize they’d rather not be there.

I found my friend Vernon Trent where I knew he’d be, parked on his blanket on the lawn with lemonade and a shot of vodka in his thermos. He never referred to himself as Vern—or wanted anybody else to either. ‘Vern the fern,’ he’d told me soon after I’d met him in college, is what the premier bully in grade school called me—but not after the day I decided I’d had enough and punched out his lights.

Only a woven-wire fence separated the gay area from a Nike missile site to the north. The purpose of the base was to defend the city and its environs if World War III began. The missiles would shoot down—far short of their targets, the U.S. military commanders hoped—bombers from the Soviet Union carrying nuclear weapons. Rehearsals, during which the launchers rose to the height required to fire the missiles, never failed to provoke loud cheering on the gay side of the fence.

You see that guy, Vernon asked, in the light-blue shorts?

The guy in the light-blue shorts standing on the top ledge of the rocks was the reason I’d been sitting in the same position since I’d plunked myself down on Vernon’s blanket. The guy was currently using his white tee shirt or tank top to wipe sweat away from his eyes.

What about him? I asked.

He keeps staring at me, Vernon said.

That was the reply I’d assumed I’d hear, having heard it so many times before about guys looking in our direction.

I don’t know what to do, Vernon said.

I laughed. You don’t have to do anything. I’ll go for a walk. If he wants you, he’ll get his ass over here as fast as he can.

I got up from Vernon’s blanket, ambled to the top ledge of the Rocks and stood next to the guy in the light-blue shorts. He was using what turned out to be a tee shirt to wipe sweat off his upper body then.

He smiled at me and made me feel glad I’d never intended to walk past him.

Chapter Two

June 1965

The guy in the light -blue shorts and I were about the same height and weight, somewhere between five foot eight and nine, somewhere between 150 and 160 pounds. We both had 1950s crew cuts. We’d both shaved that morning.

Our similarities ended there. He had dark-brown hair and eyes. I had light-brown hair and eyes the blue of his snug-fitting gym shorts. I suspected passersby far more often found an amiable expression on his face than on my stern, thin-lipped visage.

I’m Warren Hadley, he said, offering me his hand. This is my first visit to Chicago.

Welcome to Chicago, I said, shaking hands