The Violet Crow Read online

  The Violet Crow

  A Bruno X Psychic Detective Mystery

  Michael Sheldon

  For Ellie—always

  They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne.

  We shall return at twilight from the lecture

  Pleased that the irrational is rational …

  —Wallace Stevens

  Chapter 1

  Whoever wrote the script for the weather that year must’ve been a Hollywood hack. Winter’s brutally cold followed by a glorious spring. Then—wham!—this mass of cold air from Canada sneaks down across the Adirondacks and over the Catskills like the psycho in a cheesy thriller, waiting for the heroine to put on her nightie before he bursts in for the final assault.

  High over New Jersey, the cold front crept forward and collided with a mass of moist air from the Carolinas, dumping six inches of snow on the area surrounding Exit 4 on the Turnpike.

  The snow was a surprise and a temptation for eight-year-old Mimi Cohen-McRae. Spiked with energy like her dark, wavy hair, Mimi desperately wanted to play in the snow. This is my chance, she told herself. By the time meeting’s over, it’ll all be gone.

  Mimi risked a quick surveillance of the situation. She was in the middle of a pack of 50 or 60 Gardenfield Friends School kids. They were on their way to the historic Quaker meeting house, which was tucked away behind a stand of trees, a five-minute walk from the school building.

  Normally, the children would have walked two-by-two in silent contemplation. They knew they were supposed to be getting ready to talk with God. As the youngest kids attending, the third-graders each had a sixth-grade partner to help them maintain proper decorum on the way to and during the weekly meeting for worship.

  Today, however, Mimi and her classmates had to tramp through the snow as best they could. Mr. DeKalb, the school janitor, hadn’t made it in to shovel the sidewalks. Everyplace, with the exception of where the students were walking, was covered with a uniform white and pristine blanket of snow.

  Mimi eyed the perfect drift that ran parallel to the long, exposed, plain-brick wall of the meeting house. A tempting target. Unfortunately, her meeting partner, Janet Wooten, was precisely positioned to block her assault. Typical. Janet was oafish and humorless. In Mimi’s opinion, she was the meanest kid in the sixth grade.

  Mimi saw that her best hope lay in the other direction. The Quaker cemetery looked especially inviting, with its ancient trees and stone monuments draped in white. She eyed the gate that Mr. DeKalb used when he needed to mow the cemetery lawn with his tractor. Once Teacher Grace entered the meeting house, Mimi figured she could somehow nip through and roll down the snowy hillside.

  The double line of students advanced steadily toward the meeting house and Mimi got ready to make her move. But then her spirits plummeted. Somehow Teacher Grace had appeared out of nowhere and was now standing at the entrance to the cemetery. She nodded and mouthed the words, “Good morning, Mimi,” without actually saying them out loud.

  “Freaky,” Mimi said to herself. “It was like she read my mind and stood there on purpose.” Mimi had no choice but to follow her schoolmates in through the tall double doors with Janet trailing right behind her.

  The long wooden benches were covered with thin olive drab cushions running the entire length. Mimi chose a spot with approximately two empty places separating her from the person on her right; Janet positioned herself the same distance away on her left. Then the silent worship began.

  Inside Mimi’s head it was anything but silent. She thought about her close call with Teacher Grace and the inexorably melting snow: How long did meeting actually last? Mimi wasn’t sure. It ended when the elders, also seated at safe intervals along the facing benches, would lean over and shake hands and wish each other “good morning.” That was the sign. The children would do the same: “Good morning, Janet.” “Good morning, Mimi.” Other than that, they had to maintain silence while still in the meeting house. But once they crossed the threshold it was officially recess. The building would seem to explode as children poured out, laughing and shouting as they raced toward the playground.

  Still distracted, Mimi let her attention drift with the motes of dust visible in the sunshine pouring in through the large windows. She could hear kids shifting in their seats. Coughing and sneezing. Nose blowing. It was frustrating. She wanted everyone to be quiet. She wanted to listen for the sound of snow melting from the roof and splashing against the pavement. Then one of the elders stood up to speak.

  It was a white-haired man in a blue suit named Mr. Landis, who was partial to The Book of Job. “How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out? That their calamity comes upon them?” he droned and wheezed.

  This could go on forever, Mimi knew. The meetings never had a leader or music or any kind of planned service. Instead, the participants “held silence” and, if anyone experienced “the light within,” they were free to stand up and speak about it. Mostly it was the elders who did this, much to the children’s amazement, for these talks were interminable and quite impossible to follow. Mr. Landis’ affinity for Job was grounded in his belief that children needed to learn about the unfairness of it all at the earliest age possible.

  “God stores up their iniquity for their sons,” the old man raved. But Mimi couldn’t take any more of it. She turned to her right to avoid Janet’s gaze, curious to see who was sitting on the other side. Strange. She hadn’t noticed before. The girl was still wearing a coat, hat and scarf. And she wasn’t sitting with a partner. Was one of her classmates absent this morning? Mimi went down the list, but got distracted.

  “One dies in full prosperity, being wholly at ease and secure,” Mr. Landis continued, his voice rising. “His body full of fat and the marrow of his bones moist. Another dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted of good …”

  Mimi shut him out and studied the girl. Whoever she was, she appeared to have drifted off to sleep. She was slumped to one side, with her head leaning against the corner of the bench at an awkward angle. Mimi decided she’d better wake her before she got in trouble. She stole a glance at Janet, who scowled at Mimi and gestured for her to sit still. Mr. Landis was blinking furiously as he spoke. Mimi felt this was a sign. She had to act right away.

  Mimi reached out, but the moment her hand touched the girl’s shoulder she knew something was wrong. Instead of warm, soft flesh, she encountered a hard surface, lifeless and rigid. The awful knowledge struck Mimi like an electric current, as the body tipped clumsily in her direction.

  No one ever got to hear the conclusion of Mr. Landis’ recitation that morning. Nor did anyone stop to shake hands or wish a neighborly “good morning.”

  Mimi’s scream pierced the silence and pandemonium broke loose. Everyone rushed for the double doors as if their lives depended on it. The teachers tried to stem the flow of shrieking children, but the situation was out of control.

  Only Mr. Landis remained immune to the panic. He waited until the exodus was complete, before concluding: “They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them.”

  Chapter 2

  Mayor Harry Dove had called Police Chief Bud Black to his office to talk business. The investigation was not going well and the lead editorial in today’s South Jersey Post read, “Dim Bulbs Spark Race Divide.”

  The Mayor was furious; the Chief seemed to be taking it in stride. Everybody knew that the Pest, as the locals called it, was a muckraking wad of bum fodder. The Mayor knew it too. Though the editorial was unsigned, it was clearly the work of P.C. Cromwell, an ambitious, unprincipled scandalmonger, who still went by her childhood nickname, “Peaches.”

  “Look at this,” he shouted. “Dim bulbs need to amp up. Who d’ya think she’s talking about?”


  “I wouldn’t take that too seriously,” said the Chief. “She says we’re groping in the dark. But amping up would just blow the bulb or the breaker. She should have said we need more wattage.”

  The Mayor stared in disbelief. “Nobody in Gardenfield understands how electricity works. She called us dim bulbs. And somehow that makes us racist?”

  The Chief was unfazed. “And she got the facts all wrong. Listen to this.” He picked up the paper and read part of the op-ed aloud:

  “Two weeks have passed since the commission of this heinous crime and we’re having trouble deciding which is worse: the crime itself or the hapless nature of the investigation.

  “The body was found during the Quaker meeting in early April. All of the children at Gardenfield Friends School were present. The victim was a girl, 10 or 11 years old, who has not been identified; Camden County Medical Examiner, Dr. Morris J. Cronkite, is calling her Ginnie Doe. According to Dr. Cronkite, the cause of death was a broken neck. The medical jargon fails to tell you that the perpetrator, in all likelihood, was a hit man trained in silent assassination techniques.

  “The discovery practically sparked a riot on the spot. And the victim’s tender age has created a nightmare scenario—not just in the Friends School, but also throughout the school system. Children are experiencing ongoing psychological trauma. If this goes on, South Jersey will rank with ‘Newtown’ and ‘Columbine’ as a synonym for school violence.”

  “What’s inaccurate about that?” asked the Mayor.

  Chief Black raised his hand and started ticking off points on his fingers. He was a strongly built man in his late 50s. His red-blond hair had dimmed down to a blondish-white hue, but he still had a full head of it. His robust constitution and keen blue-eyed gaze remained unimpaired. “First of all, you can’t really call it a riot. The kids were scared and they ran out screaming, but that’s not a riot. A riot is when people get mad and start firing guns or breaking windows. You have to at least break a few windows for it to be a riot …”

  “OK, so it was a panic, not a riot.”

  “It wasn’t a mass murder and it wasn’t a shooting,” continued the Chief, “so comparing us to Columbine is a complete distortion.” He was now pointing toward his ring finger, saying, “And the killer wasn’t a classmate. Peaches herself admits as much.”

  “Parents keep calling and writing to the paper saying their kids don’t want to go to school anymore,” Mayor Dove barked.

  “Parents? You mean Bill McRae? Is he still threatening to sue?”

  The Mayor scratched his head. “He’s still pretty upset. Claims his daughter’s personality has changed completely. Not necessarily a bad thing, if you want my opinion.”

  By coincidence, Mimi’s father, Bill McRae, worked as the Gardenfield city attorney. The Mayor had firsthand experience of Mimi when, one day when she was about six, she’d visited her father at work and managed to deface the walls of the Municipal Building with globs of orange Day-Glo Silly String.

  “Bill told me she’s diagnosed with PTSD.” The Chief looked genuinely concerned.

  “Yeah, I know. But I’m guessing that’s just legal posturing. The thing is, who’s he going to sue? The Quakers? The Borough? That’d be like suing himself.” The Mayor seemed pleased to have uncovered this paradox.

  The Chief refused to allow him to change the subject. “I feel bad for McRae’s daughter. You can see why she’d be shook up. Anyone would be. But things are getting better.” He folded the paper neatly and started to hand it back to Mayor Dove. “Except for the Pest, all of the other media have backed off this story. At least we don’t have TV crews getting underfoot like we did at first.”

  “So you think everything’s going to turn out OK? That P.C.’s wrong and we can just ignore her? What about these charges of racism?” Harry Dove ripped the paper from Chief Black’s hands. “Just listen to this:

  “After two weeks with no leads, the County Task Force had no choice but to walk away. ‘It’s up to Gardenfield now,’ our confidential source told us. ‘We’ve got bigger fish to fry—and more of them—in Camden.’”

  Mayor Dove swiveled angrily to face the Chief. “It’s almost like she thinks we should have more murders here, just to even things out.”

  “Politics,” said Chief Black. “Camden wants the suburbs to supply more of their funding. In our meetings, that’s all they talk about. They’ll say anything …”

  “But Peaches doesn’t have to print it. Here’s the capper …” He picked up the paper and resumed reading:

  “Although we’ve always supported Mayor Dove’s administration in the past, the Quaker Killing is causing us to rethink our position. Something’s going to have to change, and we have a few suggestions. Get harder. Be more diverse and hire people with experience with modern urban crime. Get smarter. Bring in the latest technology—DNA sampling, surveillance drones, and Big Data. Or get creative. A psychic was instrumental in apprehending the infamous Mainline Monster. Shouldn’t we bring a psychic here to help us find the Quaker Killer and bring him to justice?”

  Chief Black was finally provoked. “This is ridiculous. We have plenty of diversity on the force. We’ve got Michelle Coxe and Nancy O’Keefe who are female … and then there’s Gary … Officer Malone, who is … you know. But that’s not why I hired them.”

  “I know. I know,” sighed the Mayor, who had been through this speech from Chief Black countless times. “Forget diversity. Drones, DNA testing, data mining? I don’t know what they’re smoking over there. What do you propose to do about this?”

  The Chief wasn’t sure if “this” meant solving the crime or responding to the criticism in the editorial. “It has never made sense to hire a full-time detective in Gardenfield. The truth is, we’re not staffed properly for this type of violent crime. I’m the only one who has experience running a murder investigation.”

  Mayor Dove pulled at his fleshy right earlobe; his normally slack expression now showed signs of extreme effort. He was in a tight spot, he realized, but with clarity of thought and a little ingenuity, things could work to his advantage. “I want you to hire that psychic detective.”

  The Chief looked startled. “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Why would I joke about something like that?”

  “A psychic’s a waste of time and money. I was hoping you’d agree to hiring a detective, because …”

  The Mayor cut him off. “We don’t need a detective. You said you’ve got experience. If we hire the psychic we’ll have both, a regular detective and a psychic one, for the same price.”

  The Mayor swiveled in his chair so Chief Black couldn’t see him beaming. “Old P.C. gave us an out. All we have to do is follow her recommendation; we’ll give a press conference saying we’re responsive to the community so we’re hiring the psychic. Will it really work? I doubt it. But it’ll buy us time. We can distract P.C. with updates on the psychic’s progress. She just wants good copy. We’ll give her as much access to the psychic as she wants. That’ll give you the breathing room you need to solve this crime as quickly as possible. And you better get it done … as quickly as possible. Do I make myself clear?”

  The Chief was too surprised to counter effectively. “So you want me to hire this psychic, but then ignore what he or she says and just investigate in the normal way?”

  The Mayor swiveled around to face the Chief. “I think we understand each other.”

  Chapter 3

  The borough of Gardenfield is home to some 35,000 peaceful souls nestled in the friendly confines marked by Tiny’s Package Store to the north, the J. Kilmer Pub to the east, Lillian’s Tavern to the south, and the Tiki Lounge to the west. A Philadelphia suburb, it is a prosperous community with colonial roots and a variety of pretensions, including a prohibition on the sale of alcoholic beverages within Gardenfield proper. In fact, thirsty Gardenfielders simply have to drive past the town limits on any of the major roads, in order to enjoy a beer or a cocktail.

  Bud
dy Black was not a drinking man by habit. Nor was he averse to dropping by a tavern from time to time, to see what the locals were up to and let off some steam after work. Tonight he made a beeline for Lillian’s. It had been a while. Lillian greeted him at the door. Rail thin and dyed blond, she appeared to be in her 60s and to subsist on nothing but whisky, cigarettes, and conversation. She welcomed Buddy with a hug. “Hi, hon. Nice to see you again. She’s expecting you.”

  “How could she be expecting me? I only decided to come here 10 minutes ago.”

  “We read the papers, too, y’know.”

  “I’m that predictable …?” The Chief freed himself from Lil’s embrace and headed for the bar. “Daisy, did you really know I’d come here tonight?”

  The woman behind the bar was dressed in tight jeans and a low-cut flower-print top. She was busy polishing a wine glass, and didn’t look up until she’d finished her task. Then she flashed a smile that was warmer than Lil’s rather spectral hug. “Buddy! I haven’t seen you since—what?—Bay of Pigs. It’s about time you came to see me.” Without asking she opened a bottle of Rolling Rock and set it down in front of the Chief.

  Daisy Fuentes was a second-generation Cuban. Her parents fled the island when Fidel took over, and she grew up in Miami as part of the exile community that lived for the death of the dictator. A busted marriage left Daisy stranded in South Jersey, but it didn’t seem to get her down. A tropical personality and a generous figure meant there were always men who wanted to be her friend. At one time, she and Bud Black had dated rather seriously. But Daisy finally decided he was one of those men who might be on the rebound from his divorce—permanently—and had tried to let him down as gently as possible.

  Buddy took a short swig of his Rolling Rock. “Bay of Pigs is ancient history. I really came to tell you that you look fabulous as always.”

  Daisy ignored the flattery and got straight to the point. “How’s your love life, Buddy? You got any good prospects?”