fiction

“Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. There is no such thing as concealment.”
-- Emerson, “Essays: First Series,” 1841

At half past three on November 22nd, 2019, Nicole Merryweather showed up in the doorway of Ward Stakel's office. "I apologize for being late." "Only an hour," Mary Flack, Stakel's secretary, drawled sarcastically. "May I introduce Ms. Flack, Ms. Merryweather?" "I hope we didn't keep you," Stakel said sarcastically. "Mrs. Flack and I were just about to order a pizza, won't you join us." Nicole laughed. She was wearing a cargo-pant jumpsuit, a Fubu windbreaker tied at the waist, and a black silk scarf piled on her head after the fashion of a Nubian princess. "May I use your cell phone, sir?"

The deft, flashing fingernails were sparkled mauve, a color that suited her long slender hands. Her deep almond complexion evoked an Egyptian beauty, set off by a delicately featured face, graceful, noble, and thin. She had enormous sea-foam eyes, which at times seemed emerald green, complementing her henna tinted dreadlocks and razor thin eyebrows. She gave him a manila envelope, and without saying a word, disappeared into a building gale.

Enclosed were three newspaper items: an obituary from the Queen City Gazette, an obituary from the Oakland Observer, and an article from the Detroit Free Press describing a freak mishap on the Mackinaw Bridge. It was the only known instance of a car plunging off the Mackinaw Bridge. Once the authorities had established that a vehicle had in fact gone off the bridge, there was nothing they could do but wait for the storm to abate. There were unconfirmed reports that a small car had swerved, rolled and flipped up and over the guardrail. It was only later, when the car was winched from the icy strait, that the Yugo was linked to Cindy Pluehaar, a grad student from Detroit attending Northern Technological Institute in Queen City. The fact that an elderly couple told a bridge attendant they saw a shadowy figure running off the bridge on the Mackinaw City side went unnoticed at the time, as did the theft of a blue Toronado from the Fort Michimilimac parking lot.

Stakel's question was, who sent these to Nicole, and why?

While these items received extensive local coverage, they were never linked in a way that suggested a common connection. In each case the assailant, or assailants, had vanished without leaving the slightest clue as to whom they might be. Consequently, detectives in Marquette County were unaware of the killings at and below the Bridge, and authorities in Mackinaw County had no knowledge of the attack on Lina Flately.

Weeks, and then years, would pass before the possibility of the killer having a single identity would be considered. As the caskets closed on all but Lina, no one suspected these atrocities might be linked. There were no suspects, not in Marquette, Mackinaw, or Chippewa counties. While Lina's epitaph was yet to be written, Cindy Pluehaar and Don Merryweather were quietly buried in separate suburbs of Detroit.

The connection between the rape and the murder seemed too obvious. But long experience with the workings of the criminal mind had taught Stakel to embrace an Occam's razor perspective. It seemed too easy, find the rapist and the truth would reveal itself. The return address was from Frank Rossi in southern Mexico. Stakel caught the next flight out to Puerto Vallarta.