Music City (3 page)

Alex had returned to his study and sat down at his desk. He had pulled the envelope out of his pocket, dropped it on the surface of his desk and then ran his hands through his hair. It
was hard to breathe past the lump in his throat, he remembered that. He covered his mouth with his hands for a minute and just stared at the wrinkled and creased envelope. At last, he reached out and cut the top open with a pen. With great care, he had pulled the folded sheets of paper out and opened them, smoothing them out.

On the top was
a note from Jessica that Alex now carried with him in his pocket.  It simply said, “
I believe in you, Alex.  Sell the house, take the insurance money and become the best you that you can be.  Love Jessica
.”  Behind that letter was Jessica Alverez’s Last Will and Testament. He was a little surprised that Jessica had included him in her will and made him the beneficiary of her life insurance. There were account numbers to various investments she held as well as the key to her safe deposit box at the bank and a notarized letter that gave Alex her permission to access that box. She said that the deed to the house was there, as well as other important documents. Alex remembered looking at the clock and noting he still had two hours before the bank closed. He had driven the few miles to the local bank where both he and Jessica had done business for the last several years.

Once inside the bank, alone with the safe deposit box, Alex had glanced through the contents, opened up his briefcase, and put everything in it. He returned home where he could read the documents privately. Alex had set his briefcase on the kitchen table, and with a sigh, he had pulled a glass out of the dishwasher and filled the tall glass with ice from the freezer door. He had slowly added a fair amount of
Zaya and then topped it off with Coke.

As he had glanced through the papers he’d strewn across the kitchen table, he noticed a sealed envelope addressed to Detective Derek Stewart at the police department. The envelope was stamped ‘confidential’ in red ink. Alex ignored the red ink and opened the envelope; inside he found a letter from Jessica. His stomach had simultaneously fallen into his bladder and risen up in his throat as he had read it. Even now, thinking of it, his blood ran cold.

Prof. Jessica Alverez

67 Magnolia St.

Lexington, TN 38351

Derek—

If you are reading this, I am no longer alive.

A long time after my bungled marriage, I started dating a man named Alex James who writes murder mysteries. Low budget, poorly written (Alex grimaced), murder mysteries. That said, he’s actually a pretty decent guy when he's not drinking. We worked out the logistics of the crime scenes in a few of his novels. A couple of years later, while reading some trial transcripts for class, I noticed that a few murders around Lexington were identical to the murders staged in his books.

A pattern began to emerge; someone was copying the scenes from his murders down to the positioning of the bodies. I wanted to contact you then, but I was afraid. I’m so sorry.

I have always felt that the murders were  message to me. I do know with certainty, Alex did not commit them. He never says so, but he is deeply troubled by something in his past. He lives in guilt. A serial killer doesn't know what guilt feels like.

I do know who does fit the profile, however. My ex-husband, Fred. I married him young... I was just a teenager and I desperately wanted to get out of Black Falls, South Dakota. I was suffocating and I thought that Fred, with his big ideas, was my ticket to a better, richer life. It did not take long to find out what a mistake I had made. He is psychotically jealous, goes into cold rages and used everything he could against me. I stayed with him long enough to stash away a little money, and then I put as much distance between us as humanly possible. I changed my name, completed my GED and started college. You can guess most of the rest.

Nine years ago, Fred found me in Albuquerque. He ransacked my home and tried to extort money from me. When I flat out refused, declared that he would never receive a dime from me, he... he attacked me and set my house on fire. I had to force myself to crawl out, almost losing consciousness. I'll never forget the icy hate that radiated off of him as he kicked me one last time and said that I should watch my back.  That one day when I least expected it, he would be there.  And he would take great pleasure in killing me, no matter where I went or who I became, I was never safe.

His name is Frederic Marrion George and his social is 123-456-7890.

Be careful.

Jessica Alvarez, Ph.D.

***

Alex knew then what he had to do, he couldn’t hide or pretend to be someone he was not any longer. This required him to go back to real life, to being a real adult. He couldn’t allow more people to be hurt because he was hiding in a bottle and behind the reckless character he had created for himself.

Poor Jes. He regretted that despite the undeniable bond in their relationship, neither one of them
were able to truly open up to the other.

Jes
was good for him, good for helping him try to forget… and he supposed she had helped him heal, too. When he left Annapolis, he went to Pittsburgh and spent a few days with his Grandmother. When he left there, the plan was to drive to San Antonio and start over. He had chosen San Antonio randomly, mainly because it was so far away and very different from Annapolis. He thought it would be easier. He drove from city to small town to city just making his way south. When he landed in Lexington, something about the city called to him. It was a sleepy little place, but he liked it.

It
was easy to lose his last name and just use his middle name. Alexander James Howard simply became Alex James. The books were easy enough to write, he had lived all of them. Putting the past on paper, spinning it off as if it had happened to someone else; well, it had almost been therapeutic.

But the last one he had not been able to bring himself to write and Jes had thought it was writer's block... Alex knew it was so much more than that. He hadn't been ready to relive that last and final book, the series that was his life.

He and Jes had met in a bar downtown, both drowning their sorrows in a bottomless bottle of Kentucky’s finest bourbon. Before they knew it, they were living together and had their own slightly watered-down version of happiness. Alex knew now, the entire relationship they were two people living separately together, and he wondered if either of them were happy, or did they just exist? It didn't really matter now, Jes was gone.

He
went to his room and with no hesitation, Alex went straight to his closet. In the furthest corner on the top shelf, under a stack of old blankets, there was a small wooden box—he didn't know if Jes ever saw it, but assumed she had not or she would have said something to him. He blew the dust off the top of the box, opened it and glanced briefly at the picture of the person he was before, then took out his badge and slipped it into his pocket.

When Alex arrived at the police station, the sights and smells assaulted his senses and for a moment he had thought he was going
to vomit. But he also knew there was no going back and told someone, he couldn’t even remember who now, that he was there to see Derek.

Alex had set the packet down on Derek's desk. After Derek read Jessica's letter, Alex told him that while Jes' guess at the murderer might be correct, Alex believed the murderer was someone from his own past and he wanted to help put him away for good. After listening to Alex's story, Derek had called the Chief and asked Alex to repeat his story for him.

The Chief and Derek stepped into the hallway outside of Derek’s office, but not out of earshot of Alex. The Chief had point blank asked Derek, “Do you believe him?” Derek had answered, “Oddly enough Chief, I do.” The chief had ordered analysis of the letter and an immediate background check on Alexander James Howard.

Alex knew
at that moment he could trust Derek.

Derek heard the telltale chime of the outside door opening. With a grunt, he began to leave the hall and headed towards the front, knocking on Alex's door as he passed. A young man with a nervous smile on his face was walking around the reception area with his hands behind his back. He looked as though he was in his early twenties, with curly dark hair. He was dressed to impress; the impeccable suit was dove gray, double breasted and obviously tailored. The ensemble was complete with a matching pale gray shirt, dark blue silk tie and what could only be genuine Italian loafers.

Derek was suddenly conscious of the casual khaki pants and short-sleeved button up he wore from the local big box department store. Derek held out his hand with a greeting. “Hello, I’m Derek Stewart, how may I help you?”

The young man smiled to reveal a mouth full of perfectly white straight teeth, ‘the showbiz smile’, as Alex called it. As he took Derek’s hand, Derek noticed he had a firm handshake. He spoke, “Hi, I’m Tracy Shepard, I'm here for an interview.”

To say Derek was surprised would be the understatement of the century, but he managed to hide his shock well as he swept his arm toward the hall he had just paced the past forty minutes. “Certainly, come on back to the conference room and I’ll get my partner.”

Derek guided him left down the corridor and took Tracy right into a generously sized conference room where a large oval table dominated the space. Comfortable chairs surrounded it, and Derek indicated Tracy should sit anywhere and then disappeared to find Alex.

Alex was skeptical as soon as he saw Tracy sitting there, ‘a pretty boy’ Alex thought to himself. Alex could tell by looking at him that Tracy
was born into a world of wealth and prestige. He would make quick work of this one, and as much as he didn’t want to, he supposed they would either have to hire one of the previous hopefuls or worst case scenario, they would just have to call an agency to find someone and Derek would have to accept it.

Alex took the resume the young man handed him, and got right down to business. “So, Tracy, are you waiting to
get discovered?”

Tracy smiled easily, “No Sir, if I wanted to be in the music business, I would already be there. My parents were both in it, as well as my sister. I’ve been around the industry my whole life and it is not what I want. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket and I have no desire to go to law school—what my sister did and what most agents do these days.”

Derek leaned forward after Tracy had answered all of Alex’s probing questions; he could not help but to shake his head subtly, with a glimmer of a smile on his face. For some reason he felt really comfortable with this kid. Derek noticed that the instant they met. He had good instincts for people and his instinct told him Tracy was who they were waiting for. “Tracy, what experience do you have?”

“Well sir, I've been working in my Mother’s office since I was old enough to answer the telephone. I can type about fifty words a minute, I know all of the Microsoft programs, including Access and I can create spreadsheets in Excel in my sleep.”

Tracy took a breath and continued, “I can set up a filing system, I know the rules of grammar and how to use them in formal letters and reports. I am an impeccable speller. I am organized, competent and efficient—I understand confidentiality and how to maintain it.”

Alex laid Tracy's resume on the conference table, “Tracy, you just graduated with degrees in English and Sociology from Vanderbilt, why do you want to be a secretary? More specifically, why do you want to be
our
secretary?”

Alex leaned forward as he went on, “Vanderbilt is one of the top universities in the entire country. I find it difficult to believe you would even consider this job, it’s certainly not the money we’re paying, there has to be another reason—what is it?”

Tracy's face reddened slightly and he shifted in his seat just a bit. “Well, the truth is, I’m a writer.”

Alex just nodded, “Go on.”

Tracy, though obviously flustered at Alex’s very tough questioning, relaxed a bit as he spoke, “I think working here would accomplish two things for me.” He held up a perfectly manicured index finger, “First, I need a steady job, and second, working for this firm would give me first-hand experience, real insight and credible ideas for books and short stories. I’ve always been fascinated with investigative work and I’m a really good researcher, I love it. Other than those reasons, the most important one is that I think that I would learn a tremendous amount from y’all, things that can’t be taught, things that simply have to be experienced.”

Derek stood, he had heard enough, “Tracy, would you mind excusing us for just a moment please? There is coffee and water in the reception area, help yourself,” he said as he waved an arm toward the door.

Tracy left the conference room, Derek closed the door, and turned to Alex smiling, “I like him.”

Alex leaned back in the comfortable leather chair and burst out laughing, “He’s a boy! When have you ever heard of a boy secretary?”

Derek shrugged, “So we change the title to Office Manager or Administrative Assistant, I think those titles are more politically correct anyway. I'm telling you, I like him. My gut tells me he's the perfect fit.”