« Chapter 1 »

     About twenty feet in front of me, along scenic West Beach, she jogs in a comfortable rhythm. As the distance between us lengthens, I contemplate the 10 best ways to kill her without being caught.

     Respite is the goal, not eternity in jail.

     One of those metal stars ninjas use might work. I'd sling it at her from a tightly gloved hand. No prints. It would spiral away from me and eat deeply into her neck. While a fountain of blood cascaded out of her, I'd watch her blue eyes widen in shock and horror and then close.

     Who would know? Could I stagger back to the car before someone saw me? Probably not. So what? I’d kill them too.

     Maybe, instead, a long dagger with an exquisitely pointed tip would be more useful -- or at least more cathartic. I'd still have to wear a glove but I would poke it in and out, over and over; the blood might not pour out of her so quickly. I would torture her, without mercy, the way she kept torturing me.

     At last I gasp, "Megan! Slow down. You are going to kill me."

     My tormentor, best friend and boss glances back at me, stops, and giggles. "You do look like you are about to die."

     "You laugh while I perish. Don't worry about me. I'll be okay," I tell her between sucking, labored breaths as I sit, first, and then lie back into the sand.

     "Look," I point into the sky, "the gulls are here to carry little pieces of my flesh back to their babies.” I pause to pant. “My green eyes will bejewel their sandy nests in a stunning way. The neighboring gulls are going to be jealous."

     I am forced to pause again as passing out would be bad form. "I'll just lie here. Dead. The tide will come in and slowly wash my meat-tattered bones into the water. The sharks will rejoice." I stop and take a few more deep breaths and then continue in a whisper, "Shhh! Can you hear them? They are causing the water to swirl. Preparing a whirlpool to help them clean the bones."

     "Catch your breath so we can keep going, you big silly baby." Megan tells me. Her tone is not unfriendly but it brooks no argument.

     She's heard my florid, melodramatic, all too often breathless, complaints before. They never work, I am sorry to say, but I will never give up trying them out on her as I am sure I will wear her down.

     She lowers herself to the sand next to me and I notice she has already regained her breath and has stopped sweating. She looks pink, healthy and invigorated. Despite the humid air and the three mile jog, her brown hair is immaculately coiffed, her eyes are bright with a happy light, and her fashionable jogging suit is not stained with sweat.

     It makes me long to shake her.

     “You know,” I say, trying not to sound caustic or uncaring. “There is just no good reason to continually flaunt your excellent health and style.”

     “Yes there is. It makes me seem even more attractive and unattainable.”

     “Like a poisonous tree frog?”

     Our laughter is interrupted by a sharp crack into the cool early morning air. We glance at each other and then both stand up and turn toward the sound. The source seems farther in from the beach – perhaps located above the low dunes near the beautiful, expensive summerhouses lining Bermuda Beach.

     “My, what a loud noise,” my tone is dry and calm. “You think we should go and see?” I ask her – hoping she would say no but knowing she won’t.

     Megan is already walking toward the sound and, as I start to follow, we hear another loud crack. We are running again.

     I curse my luck and long for high heels – brilliant red in color with especially pointy heels -- I could turn my ankle and fall back into the comforting sand; excused from it all.

     Especially the icky sweating.

     As we peak the dune line we pause to look around. Nothing is moving in the community of houses perched on stilts; they are an army of brightly colored spiders rising up in joy to greet us or in horror at the gun violence. We pause and I strive, with huge gulping gasps, to catch my breath once more while Megan kneels with economy and grace to tie a shoe.

     We don’t speak as we listen for further axe-blows of sound.

     In the distance a blur of motion catches my attention; I see sunglasses and then the quick whirl of a hooded figure with a long barreled gun – it is like seeing a Unabomber drawing on a news sound byte – the newscaster holds the drawing up to the camera for a second and then it is gone.

     “I see something!” I point to the left. Before I finish my exclamation Megan is up and running in the direction I indicate -- toward a purple house that stands close to the beach.

     I trail her, albeit at a slower and more cautious pace. Presumably someone has been shot. Twice, even. The perpetrator is surely running. The emergency is probably over.

     My more sedate pace suits my lazy nature and my rising level of exhaustion. Megan had awakened me at 6:30; she hadn’t let me eat breakfast and had only allowed me to drink water.

     Besides, I comfort myself while wiping the sand from my buttocks, Megan had the cell phone. Not to mention Amazonian strength and a lack of regard for her person.

     As she disappears under and around the ungainly purple house and I do try to pick up my pace as I panic slightly at not being able to see her.

     Should the Noise Maker still be present it will be more seemly to a jury of my peers, and probably safer, if Megan and I both approach at the same time. I am wondering if Megan has her gun with her when I hear her call to me.

     “Saturday! Over here!”

     Saturday is not my name, of course. Megan once told me she had always wanted a reliable secretary – a Girl Friday. Instead, she told me, I would be her Boy Saturday. This had been during the first week of my employment at Connor Investigations. I was still new and still on company manners so I didn’t object. I didn’t care what she called me anyway, as long as I had a job and she liked me.

     She never calls me by my given name, Evan. She only calls me Saturday. It is oddly comforting. I like knowing she relies on me for the small stuff I take care of and the big stuff that I organize for her to handle. I have made myself indispensable to her and I find it very satisfying.

     “I’m coming!” I holler back to her. As I come up under the house, I see her. She is standing next to an unclothed body that is laying face down. There is a dark red area of sand and oyster shell gravel under the body. To my untrained eye, there is no sign of a struggle nor is there any sign of the clothes this person might have been wearing.

     “Don’t come any closer,” she tells me. “He’s dead.”

     She tosses me her cell phone and, of course, I don’t manage to catch it. I never catch stuff she tosses to, or throws at, me. She keeps trying though; she is quite stubborn. She rolls her eyes and tells me, “Call 911 and then Chase.”

     I open a lawn chair leaning against one of the pilings that supports the building, sit down, and reach for the cell phone. I punch the numbers and give the answering operator our location on the beach and the barest outline of our emergency.

     Now I call Detective Garcia in the Galveston Police Department as Megan carefully inspects the scene and more closely examines -- though never touches -- the dead body.

     To say Megan and Chase Garcia were romantically involved would be an outright lie though it might make for some sensational, juicy fiction. In fact Megan couldn’t possibly be less interested in the good detective. Chase Garcia, however, seems to be quite interested in her.

     He is like a wild wolf on the faint trail of beef jerky in a hiker’s pack.

     The mental image of trailing drool makes me shiver.

     Despite my allegation of his interest, he’d never made his move as far as I knew. As much as Megan has come to trust me in the six months I’ve known her, she never talks with me about her personal life though I tell her about my own, of course.

     She buoys my unending bitterness.

     I’d asked Chase once if he had a brother. He’d thought I’d meant for Megan, I think. His slightly alarmed look, once he sensed my true purpose, had caused me not to correct him.

     This seeming tension between them aside, Chase was the first person Megan thought of when she planned on involving herself in the City of Galveston’s legal affairs. As she is often planning exactly this, I am often calling Chase and informing, read warning, him.

     “Homicide, Detective Garcia.” He has a resonant speaking voice and a lazy Texas drawl laced with a barely audible Spanish accent that is delightful to hear and belies his quick wit.

     “Chase – it’s me Evan.”

     “Saturday? What’s wrong?”

     “Well you know how it goes.” I tell him trying to stifle an absurd giggle. “We were jogging and then we heard gun shots and then Megan found a dead body.”

     I am unable to keep the giggle quiet as Chase curses loudly and at some length. “Where are you?” he finally asks me.

     I tell him and he hangs up without saying good-bye. This is par in his dealings with me.

     “He’s on his way, Megan.” I tell my boss. “Now what?”

     “A martini would be nice,” she quips.

     She really is a woman after my own heart. “Later.” I promise her. “For now, let’s make nice to the men and women in blue as they arrive. For my sake, please don’t flirt too much with Chase. When you do, all I can think of is my parents sneaking quietly out of the living room on their way to some lustful, altogether unseemly, assignation.”

     I shiver dramatically and insert a pregnant pause though she doesn’t immediately rise to accept my bait.

     “Cassie will probably get here first.” Megan tells me. Cassie is the police officer who usually patrols this part of San Luis Pass Road on first shift. We are reasonably near Galveston proper so Chase wouldn’t be too far behind her.

     “I never flirt,” she actually sounds affronted as she finally picks up the gauntlet I have thrown. We both know, however, that I have her number and she is a bit flirtatious when she thinks it will smooth the way.

     I am endeavoring to learn this great skill from the hands of a master. Slight modification is needed, however. Straight guys don’t react quite the same way to a flirtatious gay guy as they do to her.

     One must be careful or one is liable to get shot – especially when cops are involved.

     “Liar.” I tell her just so she is sure I know the truth.

     I am saved from supposed further offense when we hear the siren of the first responding black and white. We can see it approaching through the forest of pilings that support the houses in the subdivision. It turns off of San Luis Pass Road and starts making its way toward us.

     I stand quietly as Megan tells the officer, not Cassie, what we think has happened. The officer nods to me in a friendly ‘feel-sorry-for-your-torture’ kind of way, and I nod back. Over the past few months Megan’s gay, rather feminine, sidekick had become a noteworthy piece of gossip in the Galveston Police Department. The dull-roar caused by my employment is just now beginning to fade.

     In their defense, the problem isn’t that I’m gay. Even in southeast Texas this is not noteworthy -- especially on Galveston, Island. The problem is that I don’t make an effort to hide it or fit in. Mostly I ignore comments or stares as I have all my life. I accept that I sometimes make straight men nervous.

     It is fair – they sometimes make me nervous too.

     I carry a large bag, wear a large hat out-of-doors, tend to wear glitter, have large Elizabeth Taylor sunglasses and, when not in the office, usually wear brightly colored clothing that often has rude or risqué sayings emblazoned on them.

     Part of this is out of necessity, part of this is fear of the Texas sun, and part is because it’s cute and funny and makes me feel pretty.

     I could, admittedly, tone it down. But why bother? I have a stun gun.

     And mace.

     I wonder for the hundredth time if this job is really for me. I am always being interviewed by the police, I am always worried about Megan, and I always have to participate in some sort of physical torture.

     Like jogging. Or rock climbing. Or bicycling on the Seawall. Or boxing matches at the YMCA. Or what seems like hours on end on a stair master.

     It just isn’t fair, I whine to myself as I watch Megan point this or that out about the body we are standing around. Still and all, my employment is sort of oddly thrilling and it does have some perks though at this moment the list escapes me.

     Moving to Galveston Island, Texas from Minneapolis was supposed to have been all sun-bathing and Spring Break men-watching. Instead, I continually find myself embroiled in the seedy underbelly of the local criminal scene. Seedy, dirty, and almost always exhilarating.

     It lends a certain amount of color to my otherwise boring life and though I sometimes chafe, I almost always have fun when Megan is around.

     She finishes talking to the officer and as he begins to secure the scene with yellow tape that sets off the purple siding of the house in the most dazzling way, she returns to me. “We have to wait for Chase,” she tells me.

     I nod though I’m not quite able to stifle a groan. She giggles and tells me, “Now please don’t flirt with him too much.”

     “I never flirt.” I growl at her as she laughs. “And most assuredly not with him,” I continue, mostly lying -- flirting is fun. “He is too enchanted by you. He must like brightly colored amphibians that climb trees and exude poison through their skin.”

     “Yeah, yeah.” She tells me as her smile slightly hardens. “Just remember that comment tomorrow when you are stuck in the office while I am diving in the bay.”

     “You are entirely too manly for me.” I tell her as I happily accept what she apparently thinks is punishment. She hates it when I call her manly – she prefers ‘physically fit’. I torture her in my own never-too-subtle ways.

     I give into my curiosity about the next day, “Why am I working tomorrow and avoiding playing Barbie to your Diver Dan?"

     “You will have to start the background check on the dead guy.”

     “Any idea who the dead guy is?”

     “Yeah, I recognize him. Robert Harrison.”

     “You’re kidding right?” I giggle inappropriately. “The Robert Harrison, who just last week sold the Patterson house on the East End?” I pause as I think of all the other real estate agents in Galveston who would be delighted to be well rid of Harrison. His skill was so legendary in the city, that even I’d heard of him; a transplant six months into my new life in southeast Texas. The Patterson house was supposed to be haunted and this was the fifth time he’d managed to sell it. Recently, I had wanted to go to the open house but Megan had previously scheduled a first-aid class that I was forced to attend.

     “The very same.”

     “But what about the need for a client?”

     “Someone will want us to investigate – stop being so practical.” This causes me to sputter. Me? Practical? Megan is the practical, rather anal, one of the two of us.

     Before I can reply, Megan walks away toward Detective Garcia as he drives up the driveway of the purple house in his white, city issued, Jeep Cherokee.

     Chase exits his car and approaches us. He is quite good looking in a casually official sort of way. In the stiff breeze, his tie flies up from his chest and over his shoulder and his black hair becomes tousled. He has a fresh, masculine, sexy look and I wonder again why Megan is so disinterested.

     Like nearly every other time I’ve come across him, he isn’t smiling as he joins us near the house. He barely nods at me as he immediately focuses on Megan and starts grilling her about the events that have led us to stand beneath a pastel summer house that is now sporting a yellow bow.

     I listen quietly as she retells the story and answers his rapid-fire questions as she does so.

     She certainly isn’t intimidated by him.

     He scares me though. There is something about his seeming contempt, his tense silence when I am around, and his rather rude way of looking through me that makes me nervous and puts me in mind of Bobby Jacobs in the eleventh grade – grotesquely enamored of my difference and hell bent on beating it out of me.

     Megan denies that any of my feelings are valid and says he likes me well enough. I don’t believe her.

     She glances at me and a slight smile crosses her lips as she keeps talking to Chase. I cock my head sideways at her to let her know that I’ve missed whatever signal she is trying to give me. Chase turns to look at me too but continues to listen to Megan.

     Their regard makes me nervous. Look away! Look away! Stop looking at me!

     I don’t say that of course, but I am screaming it mentally.

     Instead, I start to turn away from them, wondering how long it will take us to walk back to our cars when I hear his voice – “Saturday,” his tone, as always, is curt when speaking to me, “I will drive you and Ms. Connor back to your cars.”

     “That’s not necessary…” Megan starts to tell him but stops when she notices my contemplative look and realizes that her own murder is imminent, “but it will be appreciated. I think ‘Ms. Connor’ might have pushed Saturday too far with our run.”

     I smile brightly at Chase. Hoping it will thaw him out a bit. It doesn’t.

     The first officer on the scene comes over to me and asks, “Can I see your I.D. Saturday? So I can write down your particulars in my notes.” I recognize him now and remember that the last time I saw him was when Megan had single-handedly – and much to the department’s and port authority’s embarrassment – caught a criminal master-mind who was using the Port of Galveston as her own personal import/export hub for drugs and Mexican immigrants.

     I had been shot at that day and was admittedly out of sorts by the time the officer came across me and began to debrief me. I am sure that this stout, strong-looking man would have described my state differently: overtly hysterical.

     He’d soothed me, I recalled fondly, with a package of Reese’s Cups that he pulled out of his car.

     “You mean besides single, 5’11”, blonde, green eyes, and relatively fit?” I pause hoping that I was adding a bit of comedy to his morning – he could tell his buddies later that he thought I was coming on to him.

     “Sure,” I tell him and reach into my pocket to get the wallet I carry when I can’t carry my bag. It wasn’t there. “Oh no!” I gasp in melodramatic horror and frantically pat my front pockets.

     Both Chase and Megan turn to look at me.

     “What?” Megan asks.

     “I apparently dropped my wallet during this most recent torture fest,” I tell her, only a little snidely.

     She frowns at me as Detective Garcia asks, “Bill? Go with him and see if he can find it?”

     The officer standing next to me, Bill was his name I remember now, nods, “Sure, Chase.”

     As the officer and I start back through the February-forlorn vegetation and over the dunes toward the beach I hear Megan laugh – a melodious sound that tinkles quietly over the macabre scene.

     I realize, however ungraciously, that she is trying to soften Chase’s mood. I know that it won’t help in the long run. He’ll still be angry at our intrusion into what he perceives as his business and his territory. He always does.

     My natural dexterity, having been taunted beyond recall by the physicality of the morning, allows my foot to catch on the root of a plant and my ankle finally does turn. I tumble down through taller mounds of beach grass with a small girlish, melodic in its own way, scream that I am not proud of.

     “Don’t move, Saturday!” Bill says to me as he rushes to my side to keep me from getting up.

     Not being sure that I can move, I am delighted to lie there gazing up at the uniform that he fills out so nicely. I want to go home, I decide. I want a long bath. I want a glass – no, a bottle -- of white wine.

     “Detective?” Bill calls. “You need to see this.”

     There is an urgent note in Bill’s voice. It alarms me slightly and, digging my hands into the sand, I do start to push my body up into a sitting position. Bill makes an arresting sound but of course I ignore him.

     It is only then that I begin to truly appreciate his advice for caution.

     Another nude body, in another pool of ominously dark, wet-looking sand lies next to me.

     This corpse is that of a woman and she is lying on her back. I can clearly see the wound on her chest where the bullet had entered exactly over her heart and then killed her.

     “Bill?” I ask urgently. “Are you carrying any Reese’s?”

     “Don’t muck the area up Saturday,” Detective Garcia tells me now, standing over me and extending his arm. I grab his hand and let him jerk me up out of the brush.

     I wish I could say that I didn’t scream again.

     At least this time it was in delight as I virtually fly off the ground into his arms. I could have stopped at standing on my own legs, but that would have been much less fun.

     Leaning into him with my arms now around him, I watch his face turn bright red as I tell him, “I wouldn’t ‘muck’ the scene up Detective – I know the rules.” I begin to loosen my hold. “Whatever do you take me for?”

     “Clumsy to start.” Megan answers for him, having joined us. She continues, “Saturday, stop fondling Detective Garcia. I’ve told you about that.” She looks down at the body and I notice a strange look come across her face replacing the smile that she’d worn just moments before.

     Chase pushes me away, only a bit too forcefully, and I turn around to survey the scene. Two gunshots. Two bodies. I glance to Megan and wonder what deductive contortions her mind is going through.

     My own mind is able to envision all sorts of scenarios – a love triangle, a jealous husband or wife and a cheating spouse, a simple act of random violence. Or was it something more sinister? Why were both bodies nude? Why weren’t they together? Who was the hooded person who shot them?

     “Maybe a sheet…” I venture quietly. I feel silly for appearing so squeamish – the woman’s body seems so harshly illuminated -- not only by the sunlight but by all of us staring at her as though our eyes were uncovering her still further.

     Something about the look of pain on her face is beginning to distress me.

     This isn’t my first murder scene certainly – Megan is always coming across dead bodies -- but it is the first time the hair on the back of my neck has stood up. I can’t say why as nothing seems especially frightening or even eerie. Just a feeling.

     Like when you and a friend are playing with a Ouija board and the planchette seems to really move on its own. Or when you are watching a scary movie on TV about possession and you come back into the room, from going to the kitchen for snacks, and all the drawers and doors are suddenly open.

     Another hysterical giggle starts to rise out of my chest and I have to look away. “Bill, I will leave you here while I go and look for my wallet.”

     Distracted, Bill nods to me and I notice that Megan doesn’t look at me – she seems quite distant and lost in thought. Chase is squatting near the head of the woman and now has latex gloves on his hands.

     I begin the short walk back to the beach. As I get closer to the rhythmic crash of the waves, I am glad I can’t hear Chase, Bill and all the others who have arrived going about the business of handling the deaths of two people.