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Welcome to Trinity’s Land End:Town of Murder & Deceit by
La-Tonia Denise Willis is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
(Click here for previous Chapters 1-2)
(Click here for previous Chapter 3)
(Click here for previous Chapter 4)
CAVEAT: *Some of the formatting has been garbled in the chapter transfer from WORD doc to blog post. **Please BE ADVISED certain chapters in the novel contain graphic material and sexual content. Rated R. ***Welcome to Trinity’s Land End: Town of Murder & Deceit is copyright, 2008. All rights reserved. The novel is a work of fiction set in a fictitious Massachusetts town with fictitious characters. ****Information from this novel excerpts post may be reprinted or distributed in its original form only, for non commercial and educational purposes only BUT please link back to this blog site to give credit, if you do!!! Regarding this, please see our CREATIVE COMMONS license above. For any questions, send an email to creativemultimedia@qwestoffice.net
Chapter Five: Founder’s Day
UNDER REVISION!
Welcome to Trinity’s Land End:Town of Murder & Deceit by
La-Tonia Denise Willis is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
(Click here for previous Chapters 1-2)
(Click here for previous Chapter 3)
CAVEAT: *Some of the formatting has been garbled in the chapter transfer from WORD doc to blog post. **Please BE ADVISED certain chapters in the novel contain graphic material and sexual content. Rated R. ***Welcome to Trinity’s Land End: Town of Murder & Deceit is copyright, 2008. All rights reserved. The novel is a work of fiction set in a fictitious Massachusetts town with fictitious characters. ****Information from this novel excerpts post may be reprinted or distributed in its original form only, for non commercial and educational purposes only BUT please link back to this blog site to give credit, if you do!!! Regarding this, please see our CREATIVE COMMONS license above. For any questions, send an email to creativemultimedia@qwestoffice.net
Chapter Four: The Ides of Summer
UNDER REVISION!
Welcome to Trinity’s Land End:Town of Murder & Deceit by
La-Tonia Denise Willis is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
(Click here for previous Chapters 1-2)
CAVEAT: *Some of the formatting has been garbled in the chapter transfer from WORD doc to blog post. **Please BE ADVISED certain chapters in the novel contain graphic material and sexual content. Rated R. ***Welcome to Trinity’s Land End: Town of Murder & Deceit is copyright, 2008. All rights reserved. The novel is a work of fiction set in a fictitious Massachusetts town with fictitious characters. ****Information from this novel excerpts post may be reprinted or distributed in its original form only, for non commercial and educational purposes only BUT please link back to this blog site to give credit, if you do!!! Regarding this, please see our CREATIVE COMMONS license above. For any questions, send an email to creativemultimedia@qwestoffice.net.
Chapter Three: THE JANUS RIVER
Welcome to Trinity’s Land End:Town of Murder & Deceit by
La-Tonia Denise Willis is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
(Click here for Chapter 3)
CAVEAT: *Some of the formatting has been garbled in the chapter transfer from WORD doc to blog post. **Please BE ADVISED certain chapters in the novel contain graphic material and sexual content. Rated R. ***Welcome to Trinity’s Land End: Town of Murder & Deceit is copyright, 2008. All rights reserved. The novel is a work of fiction set in a fictitious Massachusetts town with fictitious characters. ****Information from this novel excerpts post may be reprinted or distributed in its original form only, for non commercial and educational purposes only BUT please link back to this blog site to give credit, if you do!!! Regarding this, please see our CREATIVE COMMONS license above. For any questions, send an email to creativemultimedia@qwestoffice.net.
Chapter One: THE BODY
It was discovered behind the old barn on Jim Naylor’s property. Everybody laughed when Naylor first got the idea to convert the grungy barn into a rooming house but it beat living in a retirement home as far as he was concerned. For seventy-five years Naylor had a solid reputation as an old curmudgeon who never liked anyone to go near his property. So you can bet your bottom dollar that if he were alive today he would sure as hellfire resent the current package.
During the Civil War the location served as a convening post for Union soldiers between battle destinations. Naylor had come into its possession when one of his Bostonian descendants passed it on in a will. His several months spent working on it, fixing it up just right, were the best days of his otherwise unfulfilled life.
Upon his death the Trinity’s Land End Historical and Preservation Society claimed the property and declared it a national monument. There were no delusions about this being a benevolent gesture, but rather everyone knew it had far more to do with the committee members needing to find a new spacious spot for their bingo sessions. The executives on the board considered this requisition of the barn and its surrounding property a far greater service to the community than anything Naylor had to offer in life or death.
The years had been kind to Trinity’s Land End. Its picture postcard visage lent great credibility to the image of the classic sleepy eye little hamlet. where everyone knew each other and doors were usually kept unlocked. Ostensibly a happy town, no one was in any hurry to speak of what lie beneath the surface. It was almost as if years ago a summation had been issued to its citizens, defacto of course, that prevented any inquiries into the hidden passions and agonies compartmentalized in the lock box of citizen emotions tucked safely away. Until today, the last murder on the books was nearly thirty years ago to hear the old timers tell it. It was a legend that was passed down from generation to generation. The last murder occurred when a member of the feuding McGee clan ambushed a fellow rival of the Waddells with a double barrel shot gun over the dispute of how a very nasty rumor of infidelity came to be. The result of that past affliction which saw both patriarchs meet their end at the hands of the other was remarkable in that it became romanticized by some and was seen as a bold cautionary tale by others. However, there was no mistaking the ominous discovery of the naked female body in the mud basin behind the barn today with anything remotely connected to a thirty year old feud grounded in hyper reality. It too would be talked about in the days to come but for entirely different reasons.
The police detective arrived a half-hour later. He was on the other side of town when the call came through. He noted the time of arrival. It was five minutes past four in the afternoon and only minutes ago harsh rains had pummeled the town with seemingly no end in sight. As a result, there was barely an inch of dry territory to be found and this made for a very sloppy affair.
He ran his fingers through his thick illustrious dark wet mane and wondered why he was so opposed to wearing hats, or carrying umbrellas. Was it a man’s thing? His perfectly chiseled but somewhat hardened face showed his age to be about thirty-five. It was the kind of face that had stories to tell and made you want to listen but that was inviting and standoffish at the same time. The cleft in his chin was his most remarkable feature. He never thought too much about this particular genetic imprint acquired from a father whose Lebanese roots counted seven such male members with the same attribute. Yet he was well aware that often it was the initial point of attraction for many women. They said it reminded them of that famous Hollywood movie star in his hey-day. And his golden brown skin provided just the right kind of “exoticness” to engender either desire or antagonism.
On his entrance, he noticed the crime scene had attracted the attention of many of the town’s curious Georges. To his dismay the crowd of onlookers had done a pretty good job of tramping over the muddy terrain. He quickly abandoned the hopeful notion of finding untainted trace evidence and replaced it with a more rational one of “Let’s take a look and see what happens.” This attempt at finding a peaceful accord between the natural curiosity of the townsfolk and the demand for procedure by the law lasted for all of three seconds when one of the beloved citizens bent down to get a closer look and spilled coffee all over the body.
“What the hell are you people doing?!” bellowed Detective Litani as he slammed the door to the police car.
The guilty party, a young man in a velour jogging suit and a baseball cap quickly faded back into the crowd. In the past his disposition often came into question as he was frequently accused of falling prey to the foreign Argentine and Lebanese blood that ran through his veins. He refused to put much stock in this theory that was often applied to Italians, Latinos and people of Mediterranean descent. He saw his passions as being relative to each situation rather than any biologically racial predisposition.
It was no secret that he shared a love/hate relationship with the citizens of Trinity’s Land End, with more of an emphasis on the latter. For the record, the town had chosen him, not the other way around. There is an old saying that sometimes shit happens which could astutely be likened to the manner in which he had been hoodwinked to take up residence. It all started a few years ago after his mother suffered a fatal heart attack. It had been her desire to be buried back in Trinity’s Land End, the idyllic town she had adopted after moving to the States. She wanted it to the birthplace of all future Litanis. Due to a troubled childhood she wanted so much for her offspring to assimilate and share in the idea of a wholesome American existence. She even stipulated in her will that her body be put to final rest in Trinity’s Land End. The only thing he could do was honor her memory, even though he disagreed with her cultural observations. It was this dedication that allowed him to humbly put his reservations aside and make the pilgrimage from Baltimore to the small coastal Massachusetts village setting, in order to carry out his dear mother’s request.
Since coming to town he’d spent most of his time in the office shuffling paper. On weekends, he liked to venture down by the Janus River and lie amongst the lush vegetation while watching the plentiful wildlife and careening with his thoughts. The majestic location he was most fond of was the source spot where all the little tributaries poured into the mouth of the river’s flow. The area was ideal in its natural simplicity. It was the kind of serene venue cops went looking for to clear their mind of excessive baggage.
It was no surprise that what was occupying his thoughts lately was still the manner in which he was duped into staying on in town. On the day he was to return to Maryland after settling his mother’s estate, he received a call from the Baltimore Special Crime Victim’s Unit. It was his captain along with the police commissioner instructing him that a deal had been struck between the administrators of the local Sheriff’s department and the “powers that be”, as they put it. Apparently, just last year the Sheriff’s department suffered the lost of two of their premier lawmen to homicide units in a big eastern metropolis and they wanted compensation. It turns out the city of Baltimore shared a special sister relationship with Boston whose mayor office in turn was on a relentless mission to reach out to many of its satellite communities. At the time, he was a star on the rise in the Baltimore PD after having departed the FBI. The play went like this: The mayor in Boston informed his captain of detectives in Baltimore who immediately informed him that it would be a good political move to offer his superb credentials to the small but eager town of Trinity’s Land End.
It was a bittersweet victory, however. Nobody asked the opinion of the current long time Sheriff of Trinity’s Land End on the matter of bringing in a city detective. If they had they would have discovered that not only was he violently opposed but he also thought it was a stupid idea in general conceived by men who had nothing better to do, often called bureaucrats.
Detective Litani was well aware of Sheriff Daniel’s position on the functionality, or rather lack of, in having the transfer take place. The Sheriff failed to comprehend any of it, especially how a little town like his could make use of someone who was a leading authority in the violent crimes division and who specialized in profiling hideous murderers and psychological deviants. And no matter what the benevolence behind the trade the whole thing seemed hokey and a waste of time and taxpayer’s money. The Sheriff got quite a laugh from the newly instituted Special Sections Unit branch of the Sheriff’s department developed solely to give a means to the insanity of their inception. Still, it was a done deal and neither one of them dared do anything about it without risking opening up a can of political worms.
The fact that Detective Litani perceived himself as a man who always tried to make the best of a precarious situation was the overriding factor that kept him trying to remain in the Sheriff’s good graces. He worked hard not to step on the Sheriff’s toes but in reality, his very presence was the issue. He bit his tongue about all the jaywalking, parking ticket violations and domestic squabble cases that clouded his daily roster. After all, he was a man of the law and it was his duty to attend to crime in all its facets. Yet he never stopped thinking like a homicide investigator even when there had been nothing to really investigate. For that reason, when he arrived to find the crime scene trampled on by the various lookey-loos as he often referred to them, he was more than a little perturbed with this bothersome New England flock and could do without the whole lot of them. It was the stupidity and carelessness of mass crowds all over again. He had witnessed it time after time on crime scenes in the big city and it was no different here in Trinity’s Land End.
“Hey Detective, you here to investigate?” asked Luanne Reeves. The fragile looking housewife was wearing a house dress and a kerchief. She was a plain looking woman with an even plainer name. Unfortunately, the most common thing about Luanne was her meatball husband and his bulldog bite. Their trailer park was the site of many 911 calls.
“Looks like you locals beat me to it. I suppose each and every one of you has already devised a theory as to what happened,” he said, his voice brimming with sarcasm.
“Well, now that you mention it,” replied Tina Sycamore, “There are some things-”
He waved her off.
“It was a rhetorical question Tina. Now please, all of you move out. That’s an order. This is important. What the hell are you doing here in the first place? My responsibility is to try to preserve the integrity of the crime scene and it’s a little hard to do, just that, when I’m swimming in bystanders.”
It was a perfunctory request at best. He knew that human nature being the way it was meant that people were naturally attracted to accidents of all sorts, even while detesting them. Although he hastened to admit it it, inside he also felt the slightest bit of enthusiasm that something major had finally happened to squash the boredom. He hated himself for thinking it.
He made his way through the maze of inquisitive citizens scattered about along the perimeter. The group formed an ever-widening circle. He felt like a trapped chicken. It was the way they were eager to pounce on him with sheer innuendo and quasi-scientific criminal theories. It was the essence of group behavioral psychology.
As he was surveying the scene a voice carried out through the crowd. “Where the hell’s Henry Westminster? Shouldn’t that old mama’s boy be here?”
Henry Westminster was the local medical examiner. He lived with his very sick and very demanding mother down on Northrup Road. Northrup Road was the main road that connected Trinity’s Land End to its more prosperous neighbor Infinity City.
“That’s a good question. I called him as soon as I got the word but his mother said he was sleeping and couldn’t be disturbed. I won’t begin to interpret that one,” he answered without identifying the speaker. “By the way, who said that?” He peered into the audience.
“Looks like the gypsy girl Patty Lowell. She ain’t exactly home grown you know.” The mysterious voice said again.
The little man with a face full of stubble struggling to stand up straight was Victor Salley. Alias, the town’s drunk. Cliché as it may seem, every town really did have one. Victor staggered toward him.
Detective Litani cast a pitiful look in Victor’s direction. If there was ever anyone who looked exactly the way he was it was Victor Salley, a man tethered to the bottle. The alcohol had seeped into his skin over the years causing his entire body to exist in a sort of perpetual rancid funk. If this were Baltimore it would be the glass pipe but nevertheless, the outcome was a lot the same in the end, the loss of self-respect.
“Oh Mr. Salley, it’s you. I do appreciate the unofficial identity but maybe you should just go home and get some rest,” said Detective Litani and then waited for the resident inebriate to move out the way or at least out of breathing range.
“What was that?” Victor Salley tapped his hearing aid twice and when that didn’t work took it out completely and blew on it before reinserting.
“I said thanks, Mr. Salley. Now please excuse me, will ya?” He repeated it several octaves higher than before and shook his head. As far as he was concerned there was nothing worse than a drunken man with a hearing problem, as far as the pantheon of maladies goes.
When Detective Litani moved closer to examine the bruises on the naked body before him, he noticed a peculiar discoloration of the skin but no apparent blood evidence. One thing was clear. It was evident that someone had taken great pleasure in using the deceased for a punching bag. The contusions were to her face and midsection and they were relentless.
The body was immersed in a massive mud pile that had developed from an ever widening sunken hole in the ground brought on by dastardly rain showers, that if nothing else, did wonders to complicate the crime scene further. The town had suffered tremendously under these severe rains for the last two weeks. Devastating torrential downpours had caused rampant overflowing of the reservoirs. Detective Litani wondered how long it would be before an official state of alert was eventually called due to the subsequent flooding into the Janus River.
He bent down and touched her skin with the tip of his fingernail. It was ice cold. Not the coldness of rain water but rather the frost bitten kind from a deep freeze. Had the body been dumped? It was a first guess and he believed a good one.
As he came face to face with the body he wondered how this poor woman had come to suffer such a humiliating fate. It was something that he asked himself each time and with every victim. Over the course of the next few days, he would begin a rigorous regiment of attempting to piece together small elements of the life of the poorly demised. Her breasts were bluish-purple, indicating rigor mortis. He cleared some of the mud from around her mouth and discovered that her lips had been sewn shut with black thread. Ritual killing? It was the first thing to pop into his head but in the back of his mind he felt it a rather outrageous conclusion given the locale. But then he thought, maybe the scene was designed that way. Staged to look like something it wasn’t. He liked to second-guess himself. He was about to take another step when he felt something hard underneath his new pair of Buster Browns. He knelt down to dig it up. When the result of the discovery became shockingly clear there was a collective gasp from the peanut gallery.
“That what I think it is?” asked Lizzie French, Trinity’s Land End only librarian and foremost authority on the oral history of the town‘s settlement at the turn of the century. She was also the co-founder of the Historical Society and a board member on the town meeting Council. She greatly enjoyed all these titles and eagerly looked forward to adding more.
Lizzie repeated the question but Detective Litani was too engaged in the dynamics of the crime scene to respond. He knew it was up to him to collect as much evidence as possible, especially since Henry Westminster wasn’t around, and this meant stern concentration. In Baltimore he was used to working with an expansive crime scene investigation team bearing elaborate tools of the trade. Trinity’s Land End was as streamlined as you get. With a murder finally on hand, his job as an investigator of the Special Sections Unit was to work with the office of the Sheriff in determining the motives for and the methods used in the cause of death. The time had come for him to now flex his muscles and he secretly relished the thought of consulting with a specialized forensic team in nearby Boston, knowing full well the wrath that would no doubt occur internally from selecting this option.
He reached into his coat pocket and took out a small paper bag. He dropped the severed finger in the bag and frowned. He leaned forward to brush away caked mud from the right hand. After thoroughly clearing away the dirt and debris he found his answer waiting. It was the missing appendage’s former location. As plain as day the middle finger had been severed three quarters of the way from the phalanx.
“What kind of person would chop off another’s finger? It’s gro-tesque,” said Bottlecap Maynard separating the word in hope of emphasizing to the others his new found literacy. In his spare time he was in the process of studying various books on increasing your vocabulary because he wanted to impress a woman he’d met in Infinity City while attending a professional wrestling match there at the Coliseum; it was his other passion besides collecting bottle caps.
Detective Litani cleared his throat and tried to shake off the uneasiness of the horrific scene before him. He had always been amazed by scientific approaches to criminology and murder that soughtt to explain the nature of crime in society. As far as he was concerned, it all came down to one thing: power. And, inevitably, as these things go, the person that wielded it would always be one step ahead of its prey.
Young Tina Sycamore, eager to enlighten the Detective about certain things, stepped forward with anticipation.
“Aren’t you supposed to be taking everybody’s name? I read that’s what you’re supposed to do. Take names of anyone present at the crime scene.”
“Are you some kind of crime junkie Tina? Please let me be the first one to tell you not to glamorize this business.”
“No, no. Look, I think you should know something. It’s very important,” she whispered through clenched teeth.
With her blonde flowing pigtails, thigh high cut-off jeans and lips that seemed always in a pout, she reminded him of a case he’d worked back in Baltimore. The girl, Callie, was a teenage runaway turned child prostitute who managed to get herself tagged as a mule for a South American drug cartel. Callie was a sweet but naive wannabe who thought she had all the answers. That is until her body was found slit from the navel down with her entrails still leaking cocaine residue. Also discovered, inside Callie’s womb, had been the vestiges of a decaying and calcified fetus. He remembered the medical examiner at the time recounting the amount of tremendous emotional pain suffered during and after the autopsy.
Tina Sycamore, with her budding sexuality shrouded in schoolgirl innocence exemplified the contradictions of female adolescence. He could tell she was very much aware of this effect.
“What is it? What’s so urgent Tina?” He didn’t want to know.
She looked out at the faces of the citizens before her. She knew that not a one of them was beyond a good piece of gossip but, what she had to say was for his ears only. She covered her mouth and pulled him closer. It made her feel special.
“Patty Lowell was part of a big scandal way back then. About ten years ago.”
“Really? Ten years ago you were only about seven. Why would a seven year old be so immersed in the politics of a little town?”
“Don’t listen to her, whatever she’s saying. Tina’s got this active imagination,” said Mrs. Peabody, the checkout cashier at the Dixie Mart. She was also Victor Salley’s sister.
Tina, offended, put her hands on her hips and pouted like she’d probably done a thousand times before. Her lush lips were fullest when she was upset and she exuded an uncontrollable seductiveness, or brazenness, depending on how you saw it. She continued to direct her answers to him only.
“I’ve always been wise beyond my years. Patty Lowell was my babysitter back then. Plus, she kept a diary that she used to bring to the house — and guess what? I used to read it. Understand?”
“Barely,” he said and turned away.
She took him by the arm and ushered him away from the pack.
“Detective, I know some things and you can take me for an interview if you like.”
Young Tina Sycamore liked to be the center of attention, the grand dame of the ball. She was highly skilled at working an audience and Detective Litani had no doubt she would grow up to lead some man by the nose.
“Probably some seedy drifter from the big city who surprised her for a little hanky panky and something went wrong,” said Lizzie French, still trying to get in on the action. “She was a tramp and everybody knows I’m telling the truth.”
“Drifter? Hmmf. Maybe, highly unlikey. Here’s a little sidebar people — in most homicides the victim knew the killer. If nothing else, I think I have to start there.”
“He’s right,” Tina agreed proudly.
“All right folks, who found the body?”
An unassuming young boy with a catcher’s mitt took a step forward. He held his head down and spoke softly.
“I lost my ball in the mud.”
Detective Litani looked the boy over. The youngster probably never thought that this would be his day in the spotlight, an eyewitness to the discovery of a mutilated body of all things. He hoped his parents could afford the therapy the child would undoubtedly need in the years to come.
“Hi there fella. I promise to find that ball for you but I’m going to need you and your parents to come down to the Sheriff’s department, okay?”
“Yes sir,” said the boy.
“What’s your name short stuff?”
“Buddy . . . Buddy Erwin.”
“That’s the Erwin boy,” said Mrs. Peabody, “His folks are in the army. He lives with his Aunt Julia and Uncle Joe.”
“Will somebody do me a favor and make sure this boy gets home immediately?”
Tina Sycamore volunteered and took little Buddy Erwin by the hand. She gave Detective Litani a lingering smile that said she was glad to do his bidding. He could only imagine but tried not to.
Detective Litani went back to his car and retrieved a camera from the backseat. He snapped several shots — one from the four corners of the scene, a long distance shot and a couple of medium-distance ones, close up shots of the body and the location of the severed finger and a few spontaneous shots of the surrounding area with no particular subject in focus. He finished the day by routinely checking for fiber details and hair strands and other possibilities of trace evidence.
Back at the Sheriff’s department, a statement by little Buddy Erwin explained how he had left the house and ran up to old man Naylor’s property to “get away”. Apparently, his uncle wanted him to eat his vegetables and as he hated digesting anything green with roots he saw it as the natural thing to do. While he was playing with his ball, he saw the dead body and ran back to tell his aunt Julia. And the rest of the story reads remarkably like Chicken Little’s famous escapade: Aunt Julia, instead of going directly to uncle Joe, since she knew nothing much moved him from his place in front of the boob tube, went straight to her church buddy Lizzie French; Lizzie French, having passed a drunken Victor Salley on his way to the Dixie Mart, yelled at him for the millionth time for being a degenerate alcoholic and subsequently mentioned there was a dead body near old man Naylor’s; Upon arriving at the Dixie Mart and to his dismay being denied more alcohol from his cashier sister, Victor did his duty to carry the word on which caused Mrs. Peabody to close the store immediately and rush to the site. In her haste she ran into Tina Sycamore who was on her way to take Bottlecap Maynard a bag of fresh new bottle caps she’d saved from the school party her parents put on for her right after high graduation this year; And then there was Luanne Reeves. She said she was just out for a walk when she chanced upon the group but Detective Litani felt she was hiding something that more than likely had to do with her husband’s unpredictable temperament.
Word of Patty’s death quickly made its way into the grapevine flooding the Sheriff’s department with one too many questions. Detective Litani anticipated that the autopsy would indicate several blows to the head by a blunt instrument of some sorts, something that most autopsies seem to generically indicate at one point or another. Yet there was little doubt that this particular case went well beyond the mundane — if anything about murder can be considered mundane. Multiple cranial injuries of any kind are nearly always fatal but someone had let out an enormous amount of rage all over the decedent, caving in the back of her head all the way down to the base of her neck. Along with the cut-off finger, the person or persons responsible for her assault had made doubly sure that the defacement was over- the-top.
The next day fingerprint analysis provided an official identity confirmation that the deceased was correctly named Patty Amersyth Lowell, a former resident of the town’s orphanage. Local lore concerning Patty Lowell was scandalous. She was born in Trinity’s Land End to the mother of a Gypsy woman employed in the company of a traveling band of Gypsy artisans and entertainers.
Detective Litani knew a little of Gypsy culture from a previous relationship with a woman he met in Spain. Her name was Katarina Eloakri and she was a professor of history with concentration on the oral tradition of oppressed indigent populations throughout Europe. At the time of their courtship she was enmeshed in a battle with Spanish authorities over a wave of hate crimes against Gypsies, or Rom as they are historically known. He remembered Katarina as a passionate advocate of the Rom people so much so that there were times when her activism put her at odds with anything outside of its scope. For her, he soon became one of those liabilities and it ended as quickly as it had begun. Still, in the six months that they’d spent together she introduced him into a culture filled with hardship and pride, destruction and resurrection, but most of all, vigilance about reclaiming the dignity lost from centuries of being “the flogged mule of the world” as Katarina put it. Her lectures at the university were those of an eloquent speaker who could turn a tale with the greatest of ease and poise. Her words were powerful and fierce as she captivated her audience with Gypsy folklore that spanned from the origins of India to the present day migrant populations in the diaspora. They loved each other as hard as two people could, although neither ever uttered the word. He knew he could never replace her mission and she knew she would never settle for anything less.
Detective Litani closed his eyes and rested his head back against the armchair, with the collective files on Gypsy arrests in town dating back over twenty years balanced haphazardly in his lap. Trinity’s Land End was no different than many other places when it came to dealing with Gypsy encounters. During the summertime the Gypsies often annoyed the townsfolk by settling in campsites along the waterfront. Arrested on numerous occasions for various vagrancy charges and disturbing the peace they, nevertheless, always seemed to end up back in the same spot. Perhaps the fact that they provided a valuable slave labor source for some of the hometown mariners had something to do with it. Patty’s father, as far as anyone was able to tell, was an anonymous white man and she was abandoned shortly after birth and placed in the town’s orphanage.
He pulled out a dingy file cluttered with dust and battered newspaper clippings of women and children stationed behind tables of pottery and various artifacts. In one of the photos someone had taken a red marker and drawn a big circle around a petite woman with a daisy stuck in her hair, kneeling near a box of mementos and whatnots. Below the picture, they’d written: MORAVIA ZAFIRI LOWELL = PROVOCATEUR. The rap sheet on Moravia included six arrests dating back to the nineteen nineties on charges stemming from unlawful selling of stolen goods to various vagrancies, thefts, and breaking the noise ordinance. He held the photo closer, with his attention drawn to the woman’s long flowing apron-like, seemingly homemade, blouse pushed back just slightly off the knees as she squatted. There was something there that he couldn’t articulate at first until an even closer screening brought the matter to light; the rather thin woman had a significant growth underneath the garment. He folded the clipping and stuck it in his wallet. He ran into Sheriff Daniel as he was leaving. With only a courteous nod between the two their relationship was slowly deteriorating.
Lloyd McNally’s Children’s Orphanage was located on the outer banks of a riverbed five miles from a secluded woodland area known colloquially as the End Zone. The End Zone formed a watershed that separated many of the river basins. When he arrived at the orphanage there was still a little daylight left. He found the director outside with the kids. They were all lined up distributing sandbags around the circumference of the building.
She took a quick look at him but continued to work. As he moved closer, the first thing he noticed was the mole on her cheek. Katarina had a similar beauty affect. He was discovering that there were so many things about this case that reminded him of her.
“Hi there, I’m Detective Ray Litani with the Sheriff’s department. I’d like a word with you, Miss Jamison, is it?”
He found it interesting to watch their work habits. He remembered his mother’s stories about all the collective efforts that went into preventing wipe out from the Janus River during flood season.
“Detective, huh? Well, I’d be happy to answer any of your questions so long as you grab a bag and get in line. I don’t intend to lose my home to the Janus river.”
“All right Miss Jamison, anything you say.”
“You can call me Rebecca. What is this about?”
He fell in at the end of the line and waited for his turn.
“Actually, I’d rather we go inside,” he said while glancing at the children present, “It might not be appropriate out here.”
As soon as she was sure the orphanage was secure enough to withstand the rising tides she escorted him to the house leaving the kids outside to play.
Once inside she gave him a quick tour of the old farmhouse estate now converted into a childcare facility complete with aligning bunk beds. Four bathrooms were located in the back of the house that served its eleven occupants, including Rebecca who slept in a modest bunk of her own. The old wood furnace designed in the early eighteen hundreds was still there and being used as a heating stove and oven unit. It was located in a remodeled kitchen that expanded to include a huge oblong table and several chairs all nestled together.
“Here it’s the old meets the new Detective. I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of that old furnace because it reminded me of the simplicity of things past. Trinity’s Land End is still trying to come to terms with its colonial past. I happen to believe there are some good things worth salvaging for the future. And the kids, well, they’re just grateful to have a roof over their heads and somebody to care for them.”
“I want to talk about a girl who used to live here a long time ago by the name of Patty Lowell.”
Rebecca flinched at the name. He knew immediately something was there.
“What’s wrong?”
She cleared her throat. “Pat? I remember Pat. Boy, you’re talking ancient history. I grew up with Patty Lowell. My mother was the caretaker here then. Patty and I are around the same age. We used to spend a lot of time together. She was my best friend until–”
“Until what ma’am? What is it about Patty you recall?”
“–’til she ran away that summer,” she concluded and got up from the table in despair.
He continued to jot down information in his notebook. Sometimes it was necessary for him to dissociate temporarily when gathering vital material on the victim so that he could assure himself of a thorough investigation. However, he could sense she was extremely distraught about reliving the events of the past and he knew he would have to help her help him.
He stopped writing and went over to the window where she stood silently, trying to hold back tears.
“Rebecca”, he said and placed a hand gingerly on her shoulder, “Patty’s body was found mutilated yesterday and you are my only link to her past as it stands at the moment. We–you and I–need to do everything we can to find and punish her killer. Okay?”
On hearing this she lost it completely and fell into his arms. He held her for what seemed like a lifetime and when her tears had ceased, he guided her back to the table for more questioning.
“When Pat was sixteen she ran away from here. My mother just figured it was because she was upset about the situation, you know, her plight in life as an abandoned child and all. I talked to her the night before and she was a basket case. She appeared to be in some kind of emotional and physical shock. She cringed every time I touched her and then she’d just break down and weep.”
“Did you finally get her to tell you about it? he asked, eager to have her reveal what she was so carefully avoiding.
As a result of dealing with hundreds of homicides he had learned to be concise and to the point in these matters.
“Yes, she told me all right.” It was a bare whisper but it was clear.
“You can do this”, he assured her, “Just take a deep breath.”
She did as she was told and on the next exhale let it all go. He could tell that it was a welcomed release.
“Pat said she was raped. She said nobody would believe any story a Gypsy orphan had to say even if she did have white in her. Those were her exact words. I wanted to help her so I told her I would go to the police and lie and claim to be a witness if that’s what it took. It was important to me that she not let the bastard get away with it. She said she couldn’t let me lie for her and that she had made up her mind to forget about it but a woman never forgets her rape or her rapist. You don’t just forget something like that Detective.”
“Please, call me Ray.”
She smiled and he noticed how modestly beautiful she was for the first time. It was the kind of natural beauty that came without a hint of manufactured makeup or glamor. Just like Katarina. He couldn’t stop looking at her and thinking Rebecca Jamison could have been the toast of the town anywhere but here she was showing unselfishness and human kindness to those who could really use it. If there was such a thing as altruism in its purest sense, he had found it for a second time in the form of this woman with a sense of purpose. Yes, just like Katarina. And it made a difference in the everyday horrors of a job most would find sick to their stomach.
She told him four months ago on her twenty-seventh birthday Patty reappeared in Trinity’s Land End as if nothing had ever happened. To her surprise, however, her old best friend wanted nothing else to do with her. She refused all contact. She went on to describe several occasions whereupon her efforts to regain Patty’s confidence was met with heartbreaking disdain. Shortly thereafter, Patty disappeared again only to make one last appearance as a corpse out near old man Naylor’s field.
Detective Litani spent the rest of the time with Rebecca and her kids. It was probably natural for an outsider to assume that these kids were besieged emotionally by thoughts of depression, dejection, hopelessness and despair given their position in life. To the contrary, he found that nothing could be farther from the truth. They were the most outgoing children he had ever met.
“This here’s Chadra, she’s six going on sixteen,” Rebecca smiled, “Chadra’s been with me since she was two years old. Her mother died in childbirth and her father was a victim of a hate crime.”
He took a hold of the little girl’s hand. Her skin was the darkest of all the others. Shades darker than his. Loads of curl ringlets rippled down her back. She was the most gregarious of all the children running around full stop like a locomotive and stopping only when Rebecca’s firm voice called her to attention.
“Hi Chadra, you’re a pretty little girl. You’re going to be a beautiful young woman some day I can tell.” He then turned towards Rebecca and somehow he knew that she could tell what he was wondering. It was his policeman mind that made him want to know.
“Her father? Yeah, right. Well, unfortunately some Ku Klux Klan members from nearby Ketchum Falls took issue with him stopping to get gas one night and cut his throat. His crime was being Pakistani.”
He looked deep into Chadra’s brown eyes. If eyes are the windows to the soul, this little girl’s gaze should have revealed a lifetime of pain but what he saw was far from it. Her rapturous giggles said it all.
“You staying for supper?” interrupted a teenage girl with a massive amount of green hair. She looked to be the oldest of the bunch.
“Don’t be presumptuous Mandy,” said Rebecca.
“That’s an interesting choice of color you have there for your hair,” he said.
“Detective, I let my children have freedom to express their own individuality. I know that doesn’t often sit well in a small town like this but I don’t care. Nowhere is it proven that because a child likes a different image other than the one society wants to prescribe that the child is automatically morally bankrupt,” said Rebecca as if she had spent a lot of time rehearsing this reprisal that was specifically designed to stave off the strange stares by the locals.
“Green is my favorite color,” he said. “And for the record, I’m not technically from Trinity’s Land End, I mean I was born here but grew up elsewhere.”
This got a smile from Rebecca and let her know that she was not in the company of one of the townsfolk who thought that way.
“I guess I can really turn it on, huh? It comes from a lifetime of having to be defensive,” she said, enveloping Chadra in her arms.
“Never mind. You remind me of another. It’s quite uncanny.” Again, his thoughts went to Katarina.
She smiled again and kissed Chadra lovingly on the forehead.
The other eight children were in the kitchen preparing what might have been a chicken casserole of sorts had it not been for the fact there was no chicken and the mysterious concoction that seemed to be taking shape resembled something you might use for plaster rather than eat.
“Would you be interested in dining with us?” she inquired, still hoping the earlier outburst hadn’t succeeded in pushing him away.
Somehow it sounded different than when the green haired girl had asked before, he thought. It was more deliberate and dare he think it, desperate. Just then another girl around seven or eight came into the room with flour all over her face. She brought Rebecca a note and then returned to the kitchen.
“Thanks Joanie,” said Rebecca and opened the small pink piece of paper.
She read the note silently and put it away quickly. Her demeanor changed. Her face took on a rattled appearance and she spoke in a measured tone.
“These girls are very skilled and we take care of each other and . . . I make sure they get the education that’s due them and I refuse to let the people of this town treat them like pond scum and . . . this is our home damn it!”
“Would you like to talk about it?” he asked not knowing exactly what it was.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Oh, I don’t know if it matters but Patty worked at the library for a short time before she dropped out of school.”
“Everything matters in an open case,” he said.
The meal turned out to be somewhat of a delicious surprise as the mysterious entrée quickly revealed itself to be a Cajun stew recipe one of them saw on television. It appeared to him that all the girls were indeed as responsible as Rebecca claimed they were. They had impeccable table manners for children and afterwards each child was given a task towards cleaning up the kitchen and they didn’t even make a fuss about it. It was contagious. Even he, a lifelong bachelor who dreaded housework of any kind, saw fit to roll up his sleeves and plunge right into scouring the pots and pans, in order to make a good impression of course.
That night as he was departing the orphanage and good graces of one Rebecca Jamison, caretaker, he unfolded the newspaper clipping he’d taken from the old police files and presented it to her.
“Anyone resembling this picture ever visit the orphanage while your mother was alive?”
Rebecca studied the picture intensely.
“Who is she?”
“A Gypsy from one of the summer caravans at the marina, I presume. She has a record. Her last name is Lowell.”
Rebecca looked up at him with mouth agape, struggling to find the words.
“Look closely and you can tell that she’s pregnant in the photo,” he said.
Rebecca held the picture for as long as it took for the rush of emotions to settle before giving it back to him.
“All Patty ever wanted was to know her birth mother. To feel a connection to something that was a part of her origins. My mother loved her dearly but it wasn’t enough, she was always, restless.”
“People spend a lot of time searching for the impossible,” he said, “You can’t build a life on make-believe.”
“Spoken like a true cynic. Good night, Detective,” she replied warmly and closed the door.
It wasn’t until he was pulling into his driveway that he realized the sweet and amiable Rebecca Jamison hadn’t answered his question on whether she’d ever seen the woman in the photo, Patty’s mother, around the orphanage. One thing for sure, he was certain he’d ask it again, and again, and again if necessary, until he was completely satisfied.
Chapter Two: THE PURITAN LEGACY
The Chinese woman emerged from the shower dripping wet. The first thing she did was reach for the bottle of body oil on the dresser and slowly pull back the nozzle with her teeth. She looked intently in his direction and playfully rocked the bottle back and forth between her thumb and forefinger.
“Do me the honors?”
It was one of her many requests that night with the first being the choice of cheap motels she’d selected for their weekly tryst. Her fetish revolved around sex in less than flattering places. Cheap motels, marooned shipyard boats,church pews, were viable places of engagement that contributed to her exciting escapades. They had been dating, if you can call it that, for a little more than a month with no clear conception as to what was to come next. She refused to tell him where she lived or what she did for a living and he accepted it all on her terms.
The arrangement involved her calling him from an undisclosed location with a set of instructions for the hookup. He was always conscientious to meet every request to her liking like a puppy dog eager to please his master.
“What kind of oil is this?” asked Detective Litani. He peered intriguingly at the mysterious liquid in the nondescript bottle.
“Open it,” she implored. “It’s erotic, for pleasure. Understand?”
He held the nozzle toward the palm of his hand and squeezed gently. She was a woman of few words. The first time they’d met, in a local downtown Baltimore bar, he had spent hours trying to pry information from her. All she’d given up that night was her name, Bai;her age, twenty-eight; and her favorite book of all time, Ibsen’s A Doll House. Since then, the unscripted alliance had proven to be wholly beneficial to both parties, with neither wanting to risk its immediate effectiveness by speculating on its inevitable dissolution.
He smiled as the palm of his hand gingerly swept across her breasts, leaving behind glistening and erect nipples.
“Go ahead, suck on them a little,” she insisted in the unique demanding and oddly sweet persuasive way she had.
He obliged by hungrily attacking her breasts, one after the other,and lashing out at the nipples. After a couple of minutes had gone by he withdrew his mouth from her flesh and placed his head on her shoulder. And then, it happened. It was too late to try and pretend. He watched as the first tear drops left his face and hit her bare skin. He waited for her to inquire as to what was troubling him but it wasn’t her style. Instead, she took the bottle of oil away from him and pushed him down to his knees.
He hadn’t felt this vulnerable since his first kill. He had been a rookie when it happened and it continued to devastate him to this day. The shooting was ruled “suicide-by cop”. It’s a common term in the world of law enforcement that signifies the forced shooting of a victim by a cop in which the victim aims to kill himself by bating the cop into firing. His bosses at the top had all complimented him at the time for a job well done and labeled his actions a “good shoot” but their reassurance failed to clear his conscience. Still, that incident wasn’t what was bothering him today. He wanted to talk about it, to try and articulate his feelings of melancholy to a sex partner who wasn’t interested in communication, in the traditional sense.
“You know, I feel like, well,” he mumbled right before she poured several drops of oil on her middle finger and let it slide in and out of his mouth. “The police can’t stop crime. The doctors can’t cure the sick. Our postmodern institutions have failed us.”
He didn’t expect an answer although it would have been refreshing. However, he had known her long enough to understand that part of the enthusiasm of their sexual dalliances rested in its casualness; the primary objective being to relieve sexual tension and it was important that everything serve the plot. In other words, he was beta to her alpha.
With little afterthought of the question he’d posed, she clasped her hands together, cupped the back of his head, and mashed his face hard into her pussy. She furthered the cause by throwing her head back to one side and egging him on down below with periodic thrusts.
He could feel the hard plastic nozzle of the bottle of oil grinding into the back of his head as she pushed his face forward. He reached up to part the lips of her outer labia and simultaneously crammed his tongue within the inner fleshy folds. She whimpered slightly. For the next five minutes she allowed him to eat her pussy uninterrupted. As he grabbed on to her clitoris for dear life his thoughts went temporarily to his poor dead mother. Tomorrow he would be on a plane en route to Trinity’s Land End to lay her to rest. Her death, just days ago from breast cancer, marked the third biggest event in his life this year; the first was his departure from the FBI to the Baltimore PD and the second, the end of his relationship with the woman he loved. He was well aware of what it meant to be on the rebound and was fortunate his involvement with Bai was allowed to be what it was. He had to admit that the absence of guilt made it quite liberating.
As he massaged her clitoris with his tongue she squirted a nominal amount of oil in her hand then subsequently, pushed his mouth away. Before he knew what was happening she was plying her pussy with the hot liquid, using her talented fingers to mesh it with the lather of his saliva and her natural sex juices.
“So kind to the skin”, she moaned.
He watched attentively as she methodically dispersed the oil upward from her nether regions to across her midsection. He could not tell with any certainty whether she was in need of any assistance and so he waited mercilessly at her feet, literally, looking for any indication.
As she worked herself into a frenzy he could sense her orgasm mounting and he wanted very much to be a part of it. With the urge guiding him, he grabbed a firm hold of her buttocks and plunged his tongue along the length of her inner thighs causing her body to quiver.
“You have a lot of pain, use it to your advantage,” she said, while pushing him back against the floor and straddling him. Perhaps this was her way of responding to his previous emotional plea.
Until now he’d given little thought to his throbbing and fully erect condom sheathed cock,opting instead to follow the plan she’d designed for him.
She mounted him with an unbridled passion he hadn’t felt in a while and fucked him with reckless abandon. She ran her fingers over his chest and closed her eyes.
“The skin”, she explained, “It is our greatest sex organ.”
With eyes wide shut she leaned her body carefully forward and kissed him vigorously.
He wrapped his fingers around her waist and met her feverish bucking with strong upward thrusts of his own. She aimed the bottle and squeezed the last remaining droplets of oil on to his sweaty torso. Before long the tip of her tongue had found its way to his navel with a vigorous and systematic swirling action. He loved the breathlessness in her voice as barely audible echoes of “Mmm” graced her lips with each tenacious tongue lashing. All the while she continued to impale herself on his cock.
Without a doubt, she was the most sensationalist woman he’d ever known. She liked to put on a show and his heart sped up every time he thought about her taking charge during one of their clandestine meetings.
She came over his cock not once but three times, riding herself into delirium. As he was about to release his very own load, she quickly pulled herself up from her straddling position to squat firmly on top of his hard cock for the final denouement.
He closed his eyes and tried to think about his impending trip to Trinity’s Land End. It was not a trip that he’d have willingly made by any stretch of the imagination. Some might say that his hatred for the place was irrational, purely based on an unfounded prejudice, and they might be right. With any luck the burial would go off without a hitch and he’d work tirelessly to make the final preparations to put his family’s house on the market and return as soon as possible to his life on the Baltimore PD.
These were the thoughts that occupied his mind as he came.
***
Detective Litani arrived at the library around noon. He found a note placed on the door explaining that Lizzie French had stepped out for lunch. The community library’s only full time employee was the typical eccentric old lady that you often found in small towns. She was dogmatic and religious to a fault. Before she finally succumbed to breast cancer, his mother had often spoke about Dizzy Lizzie, as she was fond of calling her. Mrs. Litani held very strong opinions about the woman who once called a town meeting to lambaste her for removing the American flag that the Historical Society had decided everyone needed on their front lawn.
“Son, that woman was put on earth to torment me. I am proud of what this country offered me as an immigrant but never felt it mandatory to keep a flag on the lawn. Is that wrong hijo?” she would ask and he would counter with, “Only if you believe it to be so mama.”
According to his mother there had been at least three occasions in which she and Dizzy Lizzie had nearly come to blows. He was so enthralled in his remembrance of his mother that he didn’t notice the other subject of his vast recollections standing behind him on the library steps glaring upward with disapproval.
“Detective Ray Litani, what do I owe the displeasure?” snarled Lizzie French in true old spinster fashion.
He turned around to see her standing there clutching an apple in her hand. He wondered if she had plans to hit him with itto make up for all the debacles she’d had with his mother so very long ago.
“The message says you left for lunch.” He looked down at his watch. “I didn’t expect you back so early. It’s only ten past the hour.”
His gaze was temporarily diverted to her attire. She wore a nondescript black dress with a neck length so high he wondered if she had trouble breathing in the thing. The sleeves were overwhelmingly frilly and long enough to completely cover her arms and the hemline was practically two inches or so from the floor. Standing there in full seventeenth century regalia, she evoked images of early settler Puritan women. It peaked his interest to wonder if she was wearing a corset underneath.
“Just like a Litani not to pay attention. Must have something to do with that crazy bloodline. Anyway, it says I went out to get lunch. It doesn’t say I planned
to take a full lunch hour. I only need an apple, which is good enough. One mustn’t overdo it.”
“Are you on a diet?”
She blew past him with a quiet animosity and unlocked the library doors.
“I believe in asceticism Mr. Litani like my Puritan forefathers. Purity of the body and mind is a blessing. After all, a greedy palace is the Devil’s playground. Glory be,” she said and closed her eyes.
She snatched the sign from the door and looked back at him once more before entering. It was a scolding look of defiance emblazoned with a fiery attitude that gave one pause.
“I guess you’re here to find out what I thought about Patty Lowell. What can I say about Patty Lowell? Well for starters, don’t expect me to say anything nice because she was a slut. Hmmpf. She was a promiscuous young girl who grew up to be an even more promiscuous young woman. She indulged in everything and anything. No doubt it never occurred to the little tramp that her legacy of shame would be the death of her one day.”
“Someone murdered Patty Lowell Miss. French, she didn’t die because of bad morals. Just to be clear,” she confirmed.
The remark made the spinster suck her teeth and shake her head obstinately. “One and the same Detective, one in the same. If she’d led a decent God fearing life she’d still be alive. I am sure of it. God hates ugly. The truth is in the Scripture, praise God.”
She then clasped her hands together and looked up towards either the ceiling or Heaven, depending on your preference.
As time went by their conversation degenerated into a lot of awful pauses and uncomfortable looks. Meanwhile Lizzie French continued to stack the books as well as cram the good Book down his throat. She was certainly consistent. He had to give her that. That is about all he would give her. As he jotted down fragments of information he could not help but stop periodically to look around the place at the empty tables and cubicles. Back in Baltimore, on a weekday, the libraries were always filled with dozens of bibliophiles and routine researchers. With Lizzie French as the primary overseer of the town’s community library he figured not many people wanted to come around. The grim librarian elicited in him a great deal of feelings but he tried desperately to remain calm for the sake of professionalism. Besides, there were far worse people than Lizzie French in the world and with more resources to cause havoc.
“Please try and think back to the day she quit her assistant’s job here at the library? I know it was a little over a decade but there may be something still fresh in your mind about her attitude that day. Did she say anything was troubling her?”
“She didn’t quit”, Lizzie quickly retorted and stopped what she was doing to face him head on. “I remember that day fondly. I got rid of her. She was trouble — her and that Rebecca Jamison. Two peas in a pod.”
“Rebecca Jamison — the young woman who runs the orphanage that helps needy kids?”
She took a deep breath, so deep he thought she just might explode right on the spot in a hail of apple guts that comes from a long time of starving oneself for piety’s sake. He stepped back just in case because you never, ever know.
“I don’t see one thing noble about raising children to be heathens. Those little misfits at the orphanage don’t even go to church. She refuses to send them. I asked her about it and she told me she wasn’t in the habit of forcing religious dogma on her children or some such nonsense like that. It’s beyond reproach.”
She cast a disparaging eye at him and picked up a new addition to the archives. It was a book by conservative media guru Ann Coulter. She paraded it around for him to see like it was the Gospel of St. Luke.
“This lady here knows how important the fight against the treacherous liberal media is. She’s a God fearing woman like me. Let me enlighten you as to how Trinity’s Land End got those little dandies at the orphanage in the first place. It’s because of the outsiders. Outsiders move here hoping to de-Christianize good pious citizens and they spread their perverted behavior and they leave behind bastard seeds. We all bear the mark of original sin but only a small select group will be spared that final day from hellfire.”
Detective Litani was numb for a second. Something hit him. It was a flashback to his high school days and the history lesson on Calvinism. It scared the hell out of him then and there was still nothing comforting about it now. And come to think of it that picture of Ann Coulter on the book jacket didn’t inspire in him any feelings of harmony or goodwill towards your fellow man. He wanted to tell Lizzie that but to his dismay she had more to say on the subject of sin before her time was up.
“Are you listening to me? Patty Lowell was a whoremonger. You can put that on the record.”
He cleared his throat. He actually found it quite amusing when people used the term whoremonger to unilaterally discuss their rage against sex outside of traditional procreation concepts. It is such an archaic word rooted in Old English etymology and nobody really understands the proper use of the term but everyone uses it to incite disgust and vitriol of the most heinous kind. Most of all, he found hilarity in the exponential heights of comedy in the term’s proliferation of use by angry zealots of all religions.
“Getting back to the point Miss. French, did Patty ever say anything peculiar or talk about reasons she might have for leaving Trinity’s Land End so sudden back then? You see if only I can establish what the last days of her life here were like, before she left. I have reason to believe her leaving town as a teenager has a direct correlation to the sudden reappearance a couple of months ago before her murder.”
She looked at him hard as if to declare once and for all that her interest in Patty Lowell’s death and anything leading up to the aforementioned incident, or blessing as she might have called it, was virtually nil.
“You’re talking about ancient history, you hear me? It’s best you know now that we don’t like dragging up the past around here. And I wasn’t her confidante. All I know is she sinned from morning to night. That’s what I know. Drinking. Carousing. Parading around in revealing outfits. Dear God, she went around with every boy in the neighborhood growing up. Lucy Jamison was running the orphanage back then and she let Patty and that Rebecca of hers break curfew all the time to go whoring. It was downright disgraceful. I recall one time your departed mother even defended the young tramps when I caught them fooling around with the Bobby twins down by the Janus river. Shameful it was, in the eyes of the Lord.”
“Well, we can’t all be blessed with the saving grace like yourself,” he said.
“You think this is a joke?” You think you can come here to my sanctuary and ridicule my beliefs?”
“With all due respect Miss. French, this is a library not a church. And the only person making light of a situation seems to be you regarding my murdered victim. I don’t get to chose the victim, it doesn’t work that way.”
“Why did you come back to this town? You don’t belong here and you know it. We have a town’s sheriff. We don’t need any special police force,” she said.
He bowed his head and took it all in stride. She was partly right. He didn’t belong here and he was very much aware of that fact. Still, what Lizzie French and others failed to realize was something that he had come to understand during his formative years with the FBI. It isn’t whether you belong or not. It’s what you do while you’re there.
“One thing I don’t understand. If you hated her so much then why hire her to work here in the first place?”
“That wasn’t my idea. Oh no, Mr. Childress pressured me into that. That man has a lot of clout in this town but at least he goes to church.”
“Childress? The venture capitalist”?
“And town benefactor, Detective Litani, the man helped this community to rise from the ashes, helped it to be born again.”
“What’s he got to do with Patty Lowell?”
“Well, the little slut did some volunteer work for his company over in Infinity City. Later on, he said I was doing the decent thing by giving her some working hours here at the library. I told him there wasn’t one single solitary thing in this world decent about Patty Lowell. It all came from her mother, she was one of them Gyp”
“Thank you Miss French, that’ll be all,” he interrupted with the sturdy wave of a hand that caused her to jump back with caution. “If I need anything else I know where to find you.”
“I don’t imagine you’ll be joining us at Congregational Church on Sunday, huh Detective? It’s the oldest one in New England I’m proud to say. It’s a matter of record that even our forefathers used to attend,” she announced proudly.
And then she tried something that was probably meant to be a smile but unfortunately her face was not used to contorting in such a favorable way. The result was a gross distortion that did not suit her well at all. In fact, it ended up looking more like she suffered from a rather unpleasant case of gas and was in need of a healthy dose of bicarbonate soda to clear up the problem.
“No, I don’t imagine I will. I’m more of a non-practicing type myself. My parents were Catholic though. I was once an altar boy believe it or not.”
She gave him the evil eye or something akin to it.
“What I believe is that you look like a man whose spent a lot of time engaging in pleasures of the flesh. Hmmpf, and the Litani folks never were one for true honest to God religious inspiration. What can you expect when you mix all kinds of races. And all that Catholicism is nothing but worshiping false idols. All that pomp and circumstance. And just where are you going to be when Judgment Day comes?”
He didn’t bother to answer. It was no use. It was one of those questions where nothing you said would have made the slightest difference. In fact, it was a trick question. She might as well have asked him the square root of Tuesday. It was simply one of those thoroughly incomprehensible questions that made sense only to the person who asked it.
As he was leaving, he could have sworn he heard her mutter “Good riddance”. It gave him a kind of twisted satisfaction.
Puritans were prominent reformers whose disagreement with the Church of England’s theology, led to their eventual break and splinter into two distinct groups. It was the Congregationalists who settled Plymouth and eventually Massachusetts Bay. The Calvinist theology of most Pilgrims in New England sought to purge the society at large of what they deemed sinful and morally reprehensible vices. Their anti-drinking-gambling-cursing and strict provincial dress code was lauded as the only Christian code of ethics that would ensure one lived a proper life. It was their contention that true salvation came solely through a godly existence and by extension, it was firmly held that God bestowed his greatest gifts on those predestined souls who lived rigorously according to the mandates of self-control and piety.
Self-denial, self-abasement and self-induced [fill in the blank] the holy trinity of Puritan life. Now
in seeking heaven on earth, their attempts to reshape society often led to intolerance of other faiths,
cultures and ideas. “When the Devil came to New England, the Puritans gave him a single demand to obey or leave and it was his choice,” went a popular old saying among some of the modern day social historians. The statement reflects the mythological perceived notion that even Satan himself, through conversion to a visibly upright and spiritual existence, would be ensured admittance to the flock.
Elliot Trinity was one of those early converts to a life of devout consolation and predestination. His drive towards a meaningful existence meant doing everything in his power to save his soul, to prepare his life for death. Two years after he founded Trinity’s Land End he united with a famous Christian minister notorious for his fire and brimstone speeches. They formed a tremendously popular coalition that called itself the Chosen People of God, with the emphasis being on the Chosen. Together their anachronistic and atavist interpretation of the Bible was done with an uncompromising religious fervor unlike anything seen before in those parts. The minister would often regale and castigate his brethren with sordid religious tales of “the Fall” and the Devil’s relentless strive towards sullying the nature of the town’s good citizens. He
would even go so far as to lace the already lengthy orations with large chunks of Milton’s Paradise Lost and the consequences of the human quest for forbidden knowledge and worldliness. Suffice it to say the pulpit of Trinity’s Land End’s Congregational Church of God rocked from morning to night with a quaint brand of religious elitism.
The famous minister made Elliot Trinity his poster boy for relinquishing the army of Devils he seemed to see around every corner in the colonies. He preached that New Englanders were inherently a people of God because of the new bountiful existence they shared. He said that it was up to the new settlers to promote religion in every facet of government and education to ensure its stronghold for posterity. What he didn’t place a high importance on was free will. In fact, he strongly argued against it. It is no wonder that many of the opponents of this puritanical doctrine would inevitably end up casualties of the Salem Witch trials.
As a kind of state Church, Puritanism compelled the loyalties of every day citizens. Although it is argued as to the degree of influence exerted, nevertheless, the Calvinist theology was widespread. It was also innately prejudiced towards other religions, much in the same way
they themselves had suffered under the oppressive British Crown. Floggings, whippings, hangings and other phases of penalty served to punish heathens deemed immoral and unlawful. So concerned was this minister with preternatural elements ruining the land that he convinced a possibly unsuspecting but remarkably stupid and obliging Elliot Trinity to offer up his only begotten daughter, Eliza Elizabeth Trinity, for public execution. The charge of heresy against her was firmly implemented based on conjecture and stupiditya lethal combination if ever there wasand carried out all in a matter of days by special friends of the minister’s covenant. The execution of Eliza Elizabeth Trinity was declared the onset of a long day’s journey against the Devil’s legions in the new colony of Trinity’s Land End.
Ironically, in honor of her supposed willingness to confess and go to her death, a statue was erected in Eliza’s name to pay tribute. The history books made special notation of Eliza’s self-professed heresy by labeling her execution an agreeable one. It was written that as her defenseless body stood there tied to the stake that was to be her funeral pyre, she did so with a smile on her face out of an act of true penance. This absurd notion of an agreeable death was propagated for
generations to come and never questioned. And the very lovely but ridiculous statue was later constructed into the water fountain that now sat on Mayflower Drive’s entrance to Great Awakening Park.
It was late and Victor Salley was delighted to see the many quarters and nickels and dimes sprawled across the water fountain. Sometimes the parishioners, after leaving Congregational Church on Sunday, would meet in the park to discuss the day’s service. Other times the topic revolved around the next staging of the church’s liturgy play. Throughout the years thousands of conversations had traveled through the gates of Great Awakening Park and the one that was most prominent on everyone’s lips had to do with the park’s history as the death place of Eliza Trinity. For it was on these very sacred grounds that the fifteen-year-old Eliza was tried and condemned by that infamous mock civil court and burned to the stake centuries ago. There was a theory that her ghost still haunted the park and that is why a fountain was erected as a sort of appeasement.
Victor stumbled over to watch the water pour out of the statue’s mouth. The famous Eliza smile was etched into stone. He wondered how anyone could smile right
before an execution. This particular statue image of Eliza had been tarnished through the years due to massive corrosion from the heavy New England rains. As a result Childress had taken it upon himself to underwrite a financial plan aimed at restoring her glorious shine and luster. This delighted the citizens to no end. Captain America had come to their aid again.
Victor didn’t like to get involved with the politics of the town and he didn’t particularly like Childress, especially now. He hated the stronghold the self-professed Captain of Industry had on Trinity’s Land End. Childress money was everywhere and practically the entire town owed him favors and he was no exception.
Victor began to shiver and wrapped his arms around his shoulders as tight as he could get them. Emotionally he was a basket case. Everything that had once been important to him, like his marriage or hopes of one day finding his gold at the end of the rainbow was in the distant background. He had officially given up on everything and anything. This translated to wiling away the days in the comfort of a number of spirits. He drank to forget. At least that’s what he told himself constantly. Only now, he needed to remember.
“It’s my fuh-fawlt. My fuh-fawlt” he slurred his
speech and cupped his face with quivering hands. The secret weighed heavily upon him.
“Goh-gotta say what happened.” He began to wail like a new born baby. He was glad his wife was not around to witness the pathetic display.
The tears came hard and fast and he was so inebriated that he lost his balance when he stepped into the fountain’s pool and nearly toppled over.
“For a town that’s supposed to be so religious there’s an awful lot of wishes going on,” he said out loud what he had only wanted to think. The little moment of satire temporarily brought him back to consciousness.
He staggered over to fish out his newly acquired pocket change. At the moment he didn’t much care if someone saw him looting the fountain. His only desire was to come up with enough money to buy another cheap bottle of anything at the Dixie Mart. He felt it would take at least a bottle to get up the courage to go to the Sheriff, or new detective in town, with what he knew about Patty Lowell. All of a sudden, his head was throbbing and he was not exactly sure what was going on around him on the spinning axis that brought him to his knees. Funny thing, he never even noticed the big surly Hawaiian with the crew cut in a trench coat standing behind him with a wrench in his hand, until it was too late.
PODFICTIONONLINE (companion podcast to Murder in Trinity’s Land End…)
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FILMSPOTTING CREATIVE SCREENWRITING MAGAZINE IFC NEWS PODCAST THE TREATMENT MARK KERMODE & SIMON MAYO’S FILM REVIEWS (BBC Radio 5 Live) this WEEK in TECH (tWiT)
