Massachusetts Murder Mystery

This story was first published in J Journal: New Writing on Justice (Vol. 6 #1. Spring 2013). It later was republished in my chapbook Way Stops Americana, which won the Gambling the Aisle chapbook contest of 2018 and which is described below the story.

Massachusetts Murder Mystery

My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –

— Emily Dickinson

Part I

Emily Dickinson was walking across the meadow at midnight on Monday. Though I was somewhat surprised to see her out and about in my century, her fluttering white hanky assured me that it indeed was the poet, so well known for her privacy and seclusion.  I could only guess that she felt free to leave her father’s house under the cover of darkness. I followed her undetected, for I had something to find out.

From a distance, I watched her pick daisies and tall leaves of wild grass in the meadow. She arranged these in a bouquet before she headed for the highway. Cars sped by. Headlights illuminated her – a pure white specter.  I skulked in the shadows on the other side of the road.  Soon she turned into a strip mall. I looked for her in the 7-11, the only establishment open other than the Fortune Cookie: Chinese Restaurant and Cookie Factory.

I searched all four aisles and then turned to question the night attendant. He silently signaled his thumb in the direction of the Chinese restaurant and factory.  The restaurant, however, seemed empty except for a sleepy cashier seated on a stool. Before I asked, he said, “She’s in the back.”

I found her at a desk in the dusty back room. She was writing with an old-fashioned plumed pen on thin strips of white paper. “Poems?”  I asked. “Fortunes for the  cookies,” she said, without looking up. It seemed an isolated statement, fortuitous, but perhaps unrelated to my query. A gun stood loaded, resting on the desk next to the daisies and grass that she had arranged in a plastic glass full of tap water. Many questions filled my head, rushed to my lips begging to be asked, but when I opened my mouth, I merely stammered.  She answered before I asked.

“The daisies belong to Walt Whitman whose soul resides in the leaves of grass and on the boot soles of all who step on them,” she said. “The gun is mine.”

“I remember the gun poem,” was all I could say. “I remember the poem, but I did not understand it. I wanted you to explain.”       

“I can only tell you, My Dear Countryman, a gun can kill, but does not die. My words had power and do not easily disappear.” she added.

“Oh,” I said, not wanting to betray my utter  incomprehension. And not wanting to press her, I decided to change the subject. “How do you like your job?”

Her mind may have been on another previous topic from our discussion or perhaps from another century, for she said, “I try to form them carefully, to weigh alternative phrases. Still, one can never be sure, can never be totally circumspect.” I was not sure if she was referring to her poems or the fortunes or something else entirely, but I let the matter drop.

“There has been a murder,” I said getting to the point of my visit. “I must follow all leads.”  I reached in my vest pocket and flipped open my badge.

“This job suits me,” she said, meeting my eyes.  “I feel protected here and have much freedom to write what I will. There have been a few complaints about grotesque images, but Tang’s egg rolls, not to mention his cookies and chicken lo mein – you met Tang up front, an excellent cook and an adequate cashier – more than appease.”

“A murder, Ms. Dickinson,” I resumed, trying to steer her to the matter at hand. “Perhaps, you have heard of Mr. Chekhov’s insights about guns hanging on walls, standing in corners, or lying about on desks?”

“I have tried to get Tang to include my black cake on the menu, but neither citron nor brandy is sold at the 7-11, and Tang has no oven. The black cake must bake for five hours at low temperatures.  I find stir-fry disconcertingly quick, don’t you?  I am thankful for the job, though. It provides the proper circumference. It keeps me in touch. I did so miss mortality.”

“A revolver hanging on the wall in the first Act, must be fired by the last.”

“Most of Mr. Chekhov’s work was written after my death,” she explained. “Though, of course, I had the perspective of eternity, not a perspective I was entirely always comfortable with, especially once the moss covered up my lips. Nonetheless, I had time to catch up with my reading. I finally read Walt Whitman whose poems deserved a much better assessment than the scandalous one Mr. Higginson had assigned them and communicated to me on one of his visits to Amherst, and Yes, I have read the complete Chekhov.

“Our conversation seems askew,” I noted.

“What are your clues? The murderer’s MO?” she asked.

“The body cold as ice. The top of a head blown off.”

“Yes, askew. It is the delay time of centuries, though time passes so quickly,” she explained.
     There was a silence then, and then she said, “If the top of the head is blown off, it must be poetry.” She resumed her work, seemingly unaware now of my presence. I sat in an empty chair and carefully examined her gun, which soon turned into a snake and then what I thought might either be a metaphor or a puzzling manifestation of repressed sadism. There I sat for hours staring at my hands, trying to unravel her alibis and hidden meanings. When I finally looked up, her chair was empty.  The gun was gone: the fortunes stacked together in neat little piles on the desk next to a folded white handkerchief and the make-shift vase of now wilting daisies and grass. Dawn cracked through a window, a ribbon at a time.

Part II

Sometimes I think we need these solitary souls to do our spiritual work for us.  We dress them in white and nervously joke about celibacy and “our half-cracked poetesses.” The “our” is crucial and a clue. We want to adopt, to protect, to appease them.  We overlook allusions to volcanoes and earthquakes in their speech, not to mention knives, spears, hatchets, bombs, and loaded guns in their possession because we need to believe in their innocence and suffering. I like to think of myself as a creative detective. I like to think of myself as intelligent. I like to think of myself as unafraid to follow wherever truth leads — no matter who is implicated.

Emily Dickinson advised to tell the truth, but to tell it slant. That is a luxury that my profession does not well afford me. Case law in point (1): in the SUV four bodies were found, three children in the back and a mother in front. Each of the children – two girls (aged 12 and 3) and one boy (aged 8) — were shot twice in the abdomen; the mother (aged 34) was shot once in the head with a gun that lay next to her. The wounded father (aged 32) was found a half mile from the car. He told of his crazed wife brandishing a gun. He spoke of the blood of innocents and suicide. He showed us his grazed thigh. Perhaps he told a truth, a slanted truth. Nonetheless he was arrested for the death of his family. Perhaps he believed what he said. A demanding wife could seem an ogre, an impossible mortgage could seem an unfair burden. Perhaps he could not imagine his children living without their mother or their home. Our dreams concoct seamless solutions that unravel in the morning. Our dreams concoct slanted truths.

Case law in point (2): A wealthy father, a socially inferior step-mother: in their Greek-Revival home, their two hacked bodies lay; in the barn, a bloody axe.  Two unmarried daughters: Emma, the eldest, had been visiting friends; Elizabeth, the youngest, always punctual to Sunday School, had not accompanied her. Unsuccessful at learning to play the piano, Elizabeth dedicated her life to charitable works and to fishing.  She remained composed and self-possessed during questioning, during the arrest, and during the trial. The newspapers called her “masculine” and noted a dearth of lovers. The newspapers called her spinster and reported her suspicious purchase of rat poison. The newspaper described her countenance as “impassive and unmoved” but noted “her burst of hearty laughter” when the district attorney described the hefty girth of her step-mother.  But in the end, the male jury could not believe that a young woman could commit so gruesome an act. For the rest of her life, though, the neighbor children sang this song to taunt her:

Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks,
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

I have arranged for a final interview with E.D. not far from her home, and not far from the scene of her suspected crime, at the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast in Fall River, Massachusetts – a postmodern institution that while it makes light of capital crime and ironizes human tragedy and historical biases, it serves my needed purpose of bridging centuries. I have booked adjoining rooms – mine the former bedroom of Emma; hers the former bedroom of Lizzie. If she has matters to confess, I surmise, the environs will precipitate her verbosity. We begin by talking again about her job in the cookie factory. She tells me that her decision to go out in the world was not an easy one, being as it was contrary to her own self-invention, not to mention the expectations of family and friends. A night job proved to be a perfect compromise. I gently broached the topic of the loaded gun. She spoke cryptically of a “yellow eye,” by which I understood a scope.  She spoke of pulling a trigger and of an echo and a glow. I mentioned my search in the wood for the missing person alluded to in her poem – my anticipation of finding the ice-cold body with the top of its head blown off.  But she admitted only to killing a deer. I made a note to check dates of nineteenth century hunting seasons and license applications, but any transgressions in those regards would only prove misdemeanors and would probably lead me no closer to the truth nor to the conclusion of my investigation. After several moments of anticipatory silence, she softly quoted a line – poetry, perhaps or perhaps a fortune cookie aphorism –The brain is wider than the sky.  Though I cannot claim to understand the full implications of her words, I can tell you that they suddenly provided me an answer to a nagging question that I had not yet formulated – a question about metaphor and guilt; expectations and slanted truth, a question about innocence in the face of circumstantial evidence. My doubts somewhat assuaged: she stood before me vindicated, if not quite innocent as a lamb. The interrogation was over. The Brain is wider than the sky. Yes, indeed. And wide enough, it suddenly seemed, to invent and imagine gruesomely — free from the constraints of reality and law.  There seemed nothing else to say or to do. But before leaving the LB B&B, we stopped by the gift shop. I bought a hatchet key chain for myself and hatchet earrings for my wife. Emily (we were on a first-name basis now) bought an “I-survived-the-night” t-shirt. 

Chapbook: Way Stops Americana

A chapbook inspired by American history. . .

– – – including stories about colonials and natives; Bolsheviks and abortionists; geniuses and architects.

Published as the winner of Gambling the Aisle 2018 chapbook contest. For a copy, contact jkaygolden@gmail.com