Detective Super Short Stories

By the time the snow melted, five people were dead.

The village of Viremoor had always been quiet, too quiet, Detective Eloise Marrin used to say, before Winter Garden came alive with ghosts. It was supposed to be an old, forgotten estate. A crumbling relic hidden behind frost-covered hedgerows and rusted iron gates. But over the course of two months, it became something else:

A stage for murder.

Five victims. Five perfect crime scenes. And all of them, in one way or another, pointed to Thomas Vale, the godson of Victor Harroway, the late owner of the manor and a man with enough wealth to buy a town’s silence.

Just another night in The City. Two million people, and it seems like half of them must be awake, despite the hour. It’s the kind of night where the cold settles into your bones like a disease, eating at you, and you can’t get rid of it no matter how much whiskey you drink or how many suspects you chase down dark alleyways, hoping that this time isn’t the last time, hoping this night isn’t the night you catch a knife in the dark.

I’m seated at the counter at Mickey’s, nursing a glass of rye and going over the details of my latest case. A string of murders, each one more grisly than the last. All the victims are girls working the streets in the poorest quarter of The City. A regular Jack The Ripper this guy is, I figure. A copycat of the worst kind.

But all of that goes out the window when this dame walks in and sits on the stool next to mine.

The smoke in Mickey’s is so thick you could cut it with a knife. This dame, she moves through it all like a divine wind, and when she turns her eyes on me, it’s everything I can do not to drop my shriveled cigarette right there on top of my notes.

“Detective William Gray?” She asks, and I can hardly think straight enough to remember my name or agree with her that must be the one I’m supposed to have. This dame, she’s a tall drink of crimson sin, all legs, red dress, ruby lips and a figure that could put a man on his knees quicker than any bullet could. “I need your help, Will.”

O’Leary’s bar smelled of piss and vomit. I stood in the doorway, tried to revoke the smell from my nostrils.

I used to frequent this joint a few years ago, before Ginger’s death. I drank pretty hard back then. I would wake up at five in the morning, have a few glasses of Hamilton’s bourbon. On the way to work I’d have a splash of gin. For lunch, I always had a few beers with my partner Kitna. Get home and wind down with a few more beers and catch a game on TV before getting into bed with Ginger. That’s how my day went.

I don’t drink anymore. Not after Ginger died.

Most men, after their wives met their end, started dinking more. At least the ones I know. Not me. It sobered me up good. Real good. Of course the men I usually deal with are turds anyway. The kind of scum you read in the paper they were fried in the electric chair, or given the more humane lethal injection, and you wouldn’t even care they died.

At least I can say I never mourned them. Never really cared for anyone else but Ginger.

Ginger was a good girl until she met me. I know the papers have said other things. I don’t care. I’m not talking about social niceties in western civilization.  I’m talking about a lovely, nice person, who almost always helped others, even if they weren’t friends or family. I know that she sold herself on occasion. She had to do what she had to do. That’s how we met. I enjoyed her on occasion as well, but it was always gentle, even when it was rough.