Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

I knew what I was going to do. I didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to wake up every morning and look at my face in the mirror and know what I’d done. But I didn’t see any other choice. She was sick, and she’d hurt far too many people.

“I have a friend, a writer for the Commercial Appeal who specializes in exposes. He’ll love this story and he’ll run with it. Within two weeks everyone in Memphis will know what you are and what you’ve done. How many people do you think will donate money to you then? How many volunteers will stick around?”

She licked her lips. “They wouldn’t print it. I’ll sue for libel.”

“No, you won’t. You can’t afford the legal bills, and even if you could, you wouldn’t because everything you’ve done would be under a microscope, and you couldn’t hide what you are any longer.”

Her eyes flared with anger. “You’re a bastard.”

“It’s over, Sandy. Everything’s over.” I cleared my throat, took a deep breath, and forced myself to go on. “It’s all been about control, hasn’t it? Your mother took it away from you by threatening to kill herself, so you took it back by helping her. And you’ve been taking control back from other people, the ones you thought were serious and who you couldn’t save. You did it because you’ve been one step away from swallowing pills or pulling that trigger your whole life. And we both know it.”

Her jaw set, her teeth gritted. For a second, I thought that she was going to come at me and come at me hard, but then her shoulders sagged and the mask of her face crumbled. She held a hand up as if she were trying to ward off an apparition.

“You have to stop, Sandy. You can’t sacrifice any more people.”

She turned to face the window. “Leave me alone. Please, just leave me alone.”

“Keep staring out there, Sandy. Keep looking hard because it’s a long, long way down.”

Then I left and closed the door behind me.

Three days later, her suicide made the paper. At one o’clock in the morning, Sandy McAllister had finished a bottle of wine, put on a designer dress that she’d purchased the day before, and leapt from her living room window. When I read the article, I didn’t cry but I didn’t celebrate either. In fact, I didn’t feel much of anything but ashamed and numb. I told myself that I hadn’t pushed her. I gave myself long pep talks about justice and the greater good and how many other people like Lea she might have helped to kill. I swore that I’d had no other choice. Then I realized that trying to justify the past is as big a fool’s errand as trying to reclaim it, and I stopped telling myself anything at all.

In the end, I went back to the Refugee. It was the closest thing I had to a home and when you’re beat up and exhausted, you always go home.

I was three beers into my homecoming before Cheryl climbed onto the barstool beside me. She kissed my cheek and tipped her beer bottle in my direction.

“I’m getting better,” she said. “It isn’t easy, but I am.”

“Are you?”

“Not really,” she said. “But I figured that’s what you wanted to hear.”

I smiled and lifted my own beer. “That’s what I want to hear.”

“I’m getting better,” she said.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

Then she slipped away and left me alone. But that was okay. That was where I wanted to be — the only place I’d felt comfortable in a long, long time.

Foxed by Peter Turnbull

Just as this issue goes on sale a new Hennessey and Yellich novel by Peter Turnbull, Informed Consent (Severn House Publishers), will also be released. The series, says Booklist, “has a pair of protagonists who can play in the same league as any of Britain’s top cop duos... Recommend this... to fans of John Harvey and Ian Rankin.” EQMM will have more tales of Hennessey and Yellich later this year.

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