Homicide Detectives Dan Morrison and Hector Ramirez are speeding down a quiet tree-lined street in Canyon Springs, just north of San Antonio. Big homes and well-manicured yards. Long sweeping driveways that curl around back to four-car garages that house expensive imports.
“So Danny, you wish you lived out here?” Ramirez triggers a single whelp, then speeds the unmarked Tahoe through a four-way stop. Only the blue grille lights are strobing now.
“Oh, hell no. I mean the lots are only an acre or two. Seriously, how is somebody supposed to live in a house that only has five or six thousand square feet?” Morrison looks over at his partner. “I need space, son. Room to roam. These little cottages won’t do it for me.”
Hector decides to not award his partner with a smile or chuckle, instead he purses his lip and nods with a serious look. They have been a team for more than seven years now, and Ramirez didn’t even want to think about losing his partner to an early retirement next week. He likes Morrison’s dry, sarcastic sense of humor and loves the man for all he’d taught him about the job.
Acting bored and looking out the passenger window, Morrison is thinking the same about his partner. He doesn’t want to think about it either. Hec was the best man he’d ever worked with. He was smart, had great instincts and unquestioned character. He was all about family and loyalty.
The retiring detective’s biggest dread though, was not having this job anymore. Not having…this. The chase, the rush, the crime scenes, the collars and everything that goes with it. It’s who he is. It is what he is. There is nothing else behind the curtain.
The green perfect lawns blur by as Hec steers the Tahoe down the quiet neighborhood streets. Morrison’s thoughts drift and the landscape blur becomes a slide show of his life now. Booze, cigarettes, bars and all night diners. Even a face from earlier this year.
Cassy. A waitress at a strip club named Pure Honey. He had questioned her during a routine murder investigation and well, one thing had led to another. She was a good woman. Hard shell, but soft and gentle underneath. She just had a habit of always taking the wrong turns and roads in life. Never finding her way out of the woods.
They had understood each other though. No commitments from either of them, or him trying to help her get a fresh start in life. That’s not what she wanted anyway. She just needed some regular time, something real, every once in a while. Cassy wasn’t around anymore though. It had been around two months now and he couldn't find her. Gone one morning, with only her scent left on the pillow as he rolled over to say good morning. Gone as quick as she’d arrived.
Morrison’s divorce was seven years ago. Deb despises him and they haven’t talked for at least three years. He has two grown kids, Katy and Michael, who both moved away after getting diplomas and jobs. No steady communication there either, although he’s tried. At his condo, night or day, the television is always on, just for some background noise. Or maybe so he can talk back to it, instead of himself. He figures that's a little less crazy.
He blinks, coming back to the here and now. Ramirez is telling Dispatch the intersection they are about to blow through and that they are enroute, two minutes out.
Checking the mounted laptop again, Morrison motions up ahead. “Three more blocks, Hec, then hang a left. One-twenty Galleria Drive.”
They swing around the last corner and see two cruisers up ahead. One is about halfway up the drive, the other almost around to the back of the house. Ramirez brings the Tahoe to a hard stop, just missing a large brick mailbox.
“Danny, you should have taken the rest of your of vacation days and just cashed the fuck out, man. You could be golfing right now. You don’t need any more of this shit.” Ramirez opens the door and looks over at his partner.
“You’ve seen me golf.” Morrison says looking over the top of his sunglasses.
A young patrolman walks toward them. In fact, very young, Morrison thinks to himself. The uniformed cop stops in front of them and raises the brim of his hat a little. Another uniformed cop who’s no doubt Noonan’s partner is up near the front door, bent over at the waist and looking down at a flower bed. He has one hand holding onto a pillar and the other hooked on his service belt.
“I’m Officer Noonan.” His young fresh face has no color as he sticks a hand out.
Morrison shakes it, “Detectives Morrison and Ramirez. What have we got here, Noonan?”
“Well…it’s like a horror movie in there, detectives. Multiple victims, I counted four deceased before we decided we better back out and just secure, leave the scene to you guys.” He pointed to the front porch, “That’s Officer Stanson. We’ve got another two responding officers stationed outside, around back.”
Ramirez, Morrison and Noonan continue up the walk to the sprawling two story home. The two detectives put on blue plastic gloves as they go. They pass Stanson just as he dry heaves, wipes his chin and avoids any eye contact. The front door is open just a crack and Morrison gently toes it open.
“I left it that way.” Noonan’s voice is automated and he’s fighting his emotions. “It was shut when we arrived but not locked, no sign of forced entry.”
They enter the foyer slowly, eyes everywhere and taking everything in. The group walks carefully around bloody footprints on the marble floor. They head to the door and away from it.
Noonan stops, clears his throat and says, “Neighbor right next door called this. Called it in, I mean. Mrs. Carter.” He stops and points a shaky finger at the neighboring house. “Tennis date. I mean, she had one, with the lady that lives here and…” He stops talking and shakes his head, frustrated, staring at Morrison with lips pressed tightly together. The young cop’s eyes are searching Morrison’s for an explanation to what he’d seen.
Morrison puts up his hand softly. “Just go slow but try to focus…and keep talking, son. None of us ever really gets used to this. There’s no reasoning or sense to it. It’s okay, so take your time.”
“Yessir. Sorry. A Mrs. Carter from next door came to get her friend at this residence.” Noonan paused looking down at a little notepad he was holding. It was shaking. “Mrs. Marylin Carter. She came to get her friend and saw the bloody footprints through the entryway glass. She got scared, didn’t go inside, called nine-one-one.” Noonan’s speech was still stop and go, speeding and halting. “I told her to stay put, until you guys talk to her.”
“Alright, got it. Where are the bodies located that you saw ?” Morrison’s voice was calm but firm.
“All in the big main room. Big family room, just off the kitchen. All the way down this hallway, then go right.” Noonan rests a hand on the butt of his holstered gun. “We have not swept the entire house yet, Detectives.”
“Okay, understood. Touch anything in the house? And I mean any damn thing, Officer Noonan?”
“No sir, only the doorknob on the way in but not coming out.”
Morrison nods and leads the trio down the long hallway, approaching the corner on his right. He draws his gun slow and easy, pointing it to the floor. He can smell that smell and readies himself for a familiar scene, but what he sees as he does a quick forward and back peep around the corner, stops him cold.
There have been plenty of bad things in his twenty-six years of doing this. Horrible things. Sickening scenes you don’t forget. It comes home with you, sleeps with you and wakes up with you. He had learned to just file it away the best he could. Trouble was, that file cabinet was getting very full. But this, this right here, this was different.
It’s a large, open and comfortable room with a vaulted ceiling. Stylish black and white tile floor. Big ceiling fans turning slow and lazy. It is the kind of room where a family spends most of their time. There is a huge flat-screen and an entertainment system. A home video of what looks like a high school baseball game is playing, with fans cheering. There are big, oversized leather chairs and two large, expensive couches.
A massive stone fireplace dominates the room. You could almost crouch down and walk into the damn thing, he thinks to himself. But the ornately carved stone mantle above that magnificent fireplace is the main attraction. The mantle is silently screaming for everyone’s attention.
There are four of them, all in a row, sitting on that white marbled mantle. Four heads, with blood smeared faces and matted hair. They are evenly spaced out and upright. The two adults have dull, glazed-over eyes that are open and staring right back at the detectives. Morrison can see what looks like toothpicks broken in half, holding their eyelids open.
Thick rivulets of coagulated blood had at some point dripped off the edge of the mantle, making several pools on the tile floor. Morrison scanned to his right, surveying the entire scene. There are thick red slide marks on the tiles leading into the room from another hallway. Just one hell of a lot of blood.
The headless bodies are a gory mess. Arms behind their backs, bound at the wrists and ankles with plastic ties. Morrison determines from the heads and bodies that two of them are older teens. The teens are propped up in those expensive chairs spotted around the room.
There are two adult bodies, completely naked on one of the couches. Female laying on top of a male. They’re all staged and positioned, like headless mannequins. Bowls of snacks and drinks, with the ice long gone, are sitting in rings of water on a large glass table.
Morrison closes his eyes, but only for a moment, and then lets out a tired, shallow sigh. The scene burned into his memory, and he swears he smells the smoke of that burn. He walks slowly toward the fireplace.
Ramirez is looking at a gold framed picture on the glass coffee table and without looking up quietly asks, “Officer Noonan, did you ask the neighbor lady about the family at all, or did she mention anything about them?”
“Yes, but just a little. They are…well…they were, the Blaine family. Married couple. Family of four, two teenage kids…a girl and a boy.” Noonan finally tears his stare away from the heads. “That’s about it though. I’m sure she’ll have more to say.”
“Here they are.” Ramirez steps toward Morrison and passes him the family photo.
Morrison stares at the picture for a moment, looks up and then back down at the family portrait. “Noonan, I want you to direct the officers out back to stay right where they are. They need to watch windows and doors. Then drag your partner back in here and do a house sweep. Gloves on. Basement, garage, attic, crawlspace, every room, every closet, every nook and cranny. Don’t touch or move anything you don’t have to.”
“Yessir.” Noonan headed to the large sliding doors leading to the back.
In the background, the family video on the big screen plays on, the crowd noise gets louder. The camera follows a kid walking to the plate, taking practice swings on his way. The yells and cheering pick up even more.
“Hec, this isn’t the dad here on the mantle.” Morrison's voice was low and intense. He was peering closely at the adult male’s head, only inches away from it now.
Ramirez walks over to Morrison and puts a hand on the older detective’s shoulder. “Look Danny, we gotta call the cavalry right away on this one, we’re going to need the whole damn circus in here…and…wait, what? What about the dad?”
The crowd noise on the video from the game abruptly cuts off and their eyes sweep over to the big screen at the same time. There is a face now, not a baseball game.
“…Hello there. So, as you can see, we had a problem here. Much more than your run of the mill domestic disturbance, right? First, please make sure and tell Marilyn Carter next door that her wonderful Robert was screwing my Allie. Allison Blaine, the love of my life, my wife of twenty-one years. Oh, how Robert cried. How he begged and pleaded. Tried to deny it at first, then attempted to pass all the blame to Allie, tried to throw her under the bus.”
Staring at the screen, Morrison’s voice goes even lower. “This is dad.”
The voice of the smiling man is calm. Almost serene. “My own kids knew about it, too. Even my golden boy, my prep All-American, Todd. They were all in on the big secret. Everyone knew except me.”
Morrison’s eyes do not move away from the screen. His rage is building because of many things, one being that he’s pretty sure how this will end.
The man in the video grins even bigger now. “By the way, Todd will hit a monster home run here in a minute that you’ll see if you keep watching after I’m done. He got all of it. Crushed it. But anyway, you know, I can understand the girls sticking together. Trish would never betray Allie. She never, ever, sided with me over her mother. About anything.”
Steven Blaine, the Senior Vice President of a major software company, pauses thoughtfully with eyes that seemed to be looking only at Morrison. Still smiling like he just won the lottery. “But Todd? I mean, how could he not tell me…I guess everyone loved Robert Carter.”
Blaine’s voice continues in a conversational tone. “So anyway, I’m out in the garage, with a bullet in my brain. I was the last man standing if you will. Sorry about all the blood and gore out there, that’s where I did them all. Let’s see, though, where do I start… Oh, and before I forget, along with all the other mayhem, I also found it necessary to castrate Robert Carter. This was before I killed him, of course. You’ll find it nailed, somewhat sloppily I admit, to the wall next to the branch clippers I used on him.”
Ramirez starts toward the hallway where the bloody trail and swath lead, but Morrison holds a hand up to stop him.
On the screen, Blaine shakes his head. “All this wasn’t easy, I can tell you that. I didn’t want them all dead right away, so I had to somehow restrain them at first, one by one. As you can imagine it took some time, planning and a fair amount of deception. It was a real tussle with Todd, and with Allie too, she was spirited to say the least.”
Almost a chuckle from Blaine comes at this point, as much terrifying as it is sickening. “It was just far more work than I had anticipated. Finally, though, I was ready and did them, again one by one. So they could, you know…anticipate what was coming. I saved Allie for last. It was only right.”
The face on the screen smiles easily one more time, and yes, there it was. What Morrison knew that he’d see at some point. Not blind rage, or a murderer’s smirk or even a killer’s glare. It is that certain undefinable little dark twinkle, that shiny midnight black of true madness in the eyes.
“Last thing, the blood in the foyer is mine. To ease your entry, I unlocked the front door when I was finished. No need for you to break down a beautiful door. So listen, I guess that’s it really. A condensed version of events, you might say. No case to really solve. My parting gift to you. No mystery or overtime shifts spent figuring this one out.” Blaine gives a friendly little wave to the camera. “Goodbye.”
The screen blinks and the looped baseball video comes back on.
Morrison would never admit it to anyone, but it was the rare guy like Blaine that had always gotten to him the most. He had no real problem with cold-blooded vengeance murders, vicious killers, passion killings and almost any other flavor of homicide you want to dream up.
But it was this, this kind of a random mind snap that bothered him. The sudden flip of that special light switch. When people like Blaine hit the breaking point or reach the tipping point. The moment they lose their footing on the cliff edge of sanity and hurdle down into the abyss.
They go from sane and ordinary one minute to complete madness the next…and that special gleam in the eyes always comes with it. It’s the only thing that still scares Morrison. There had been a few other cases like this down through the years but nothing quite like this one. He looks at the heads one more time and knows the truth. Knows he can’t hide it anymore. He’s done.
Whatever fight or strong will that Morrison had left in him, before rolling up on this house, is finally gone. He walks past Hector as he’s making the all hands on deck call and heads back to the front of the house. Next week suddenly can’t come soon enough.
Outside, on the pillared front porch, Morrison fishes a cigarette out and lights it. He glances over at Noonan’s partner, who is still standing there, hands on hips.
“I know this is awful stuff, but you gotta buck up son. Your partner needs you in there. Don’t touch anything and don’t step in anything.” His voice is flat and emotionless.
Without looking back, Morrison starts down the stone sidewalk that leads to the driveway. He smokes casually as he walks. He passes the cruiser, then the Tahoe and just keeps going. Turns a corner and then another.
He thinks about Steven Blaine and what he’d done. How he did it. How this monster had cheated him out of being able to catch him. Coming to an intersection, he considers what direction he’ll take and laughs out loud at the irony, the symbolism of that. Left, right or straight ahead into a cul-de-sac?
There was no parting of clouds, moment of clarity, or bells going off in his head, just a clear realization and surrender. Who am I kidding? He thinks. This has always been me, always in me, even as a boy. Righting wrongs. It’s what I do. He stepped off the curb and went straight ahead.
So there it was, he would not go through the motions of retiring next week. Wouldn’t be getting drunk at the party, sharing old stories of the job with the men and women he’d worked with, then saying his goodbyes. That would all have to wait. He just couldn’t go out like this. He wanted one more chance, one more case, one more perp to put away. If he was to quit on this one, Blaine wins and that, that is just not acceptable.
Morrison circled the cul-de-sac and headed back the way he had come, back to the crime scene. Multiple sirens were wailing far off but getting closer and he picked up his pace. One more case, just one more.
He wondered as he went though, wondered about his real motivation and true reason for deciding to postpone retirement. Was his decision based on the principles of justice and an obligation to serve the public or was it a mix of pure ego, the selfish need to win and his lack of any personal life.
Morrison was all but trotting back to the murder scene now and he came to the conclusion that it was all of those reasons. Service, duty, ego and no real life. A concoction that produced very bad side effects but also a winning recipe for being a very good detective.
The Blaine home came into view and the approaching sirens got louder still. Chirps and whoops coming from several directions converging on the scene. This was it, all of it, all that was left of Dan Morrison. Sad as that was and whether he liked it or not. Complete the reports and move on.
The next one would be different. He would win and somebody, some waste of skin, would lose.
It was all that mattered anymore.
You are the absolute king of crime fiction, Jim! This was chilling and very human, deep and layered. I hope Det. Morrison gets his win next time. Despite his lack of a satisfying life outside his job, or maybe even because of it, he’s one of the good guys.
Great work, Jim. Morrison is a beautiful multidimensional character. We’re with him, step by step, and the reaching of the decision. Wonderful.