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© 2004-2008 Katt Thrasher 
She pulled into her driveway at noon, the brakes of her minivan squeaking loudly as usual. The noise grated on her nerves and sounded in all types of weather. Despite several trips to the dealership to have the brakes looked at, nothing had changed. Most recently, the mechanic had assured her that humidity was causing the problem. She was almost certain that he was just trying to get her to go away and stop being a nuisance.
As long as the brakes weren’t likely to fail any time soon, she supposed there wasn’t any point in pursuing the matter further. Especially since no one seemed inclined to actually help her.
The sun above her suburban neighborhood was brutal. Despite the fact that it was only April, the temperature was already in the eighties and had been for the last week. She wondered, as she unloaded her groceries from the back of her van, what it was that was playing hob with the weather.
Her house was blissfully cool on the inside. Air conditioning was by far one of the best contrivances ever invented, and she’d come across quite a few extraordinary machines in her travels. She set her grocery bags on the kitchen counter and began emptying them of their contents.
Despite the fact that it was only midday, her husband was due home in the next hour or so. The small company at which he was employed was having financial difficulty and only called him in to work if there was a project that needed his immediate attention. He hadn’t had any luck finding another job, and money was getting tight enough that soon they might have to sell their house. She wondered, as she pondered their recent money troubles and put the milk away, if now would be a good time to let him in on her little secret.
She brushed her long red hair over her shoulder and restrained it with a hair tie. Even in the AC, she was too hot to wear her hair down. She knew that once she sat down she would cool off, but she still had quite a few manual chores to do. And now that the groceries were all stowed in their proper places, it was time to move on to the next one.
She went up the carpeted stairs and into the master bedroom. There in the corner sat the laundry hamper, which she emptied into a basket she’d brought up from the basement that morning. After settling the bottom of the basket in the crook of her waist, she headed for the basement.
A picture on the wall adjacent to the stairs caught her eye for the millionth time. It was small and faded and hung in a simple frame. Her husband, barely two years old at the time, sat between his parents who smiled politely out at the viewer. She thought it sad that the only picture he had of him and his parents was so formal. Especially with how terrible their deaths had been.
She shook herself and continued her journey to the basement.
Their home was oddly lacking of family photographs. There were her husband’s reasons for not displaying any, and then she had some of her own. Her family was a little…bizarre. She talked about them from time to time, though always in the past tense, as if they were all deceased. As none of them had ever technically been alive, it was appropriate. But looking at her friends houses, which were awash with familial memorabilia, she felt freakish. Especially since none of them knew why she and her husband seemed to ignore their heritage.
The basement light begrudgingly turned on and then made a soft buzzing sound in protest. Soon the filament would shatter and the bulb would need replacing. It was yet another chore to look forward to sometime in the near future.
She sorted the laundry into piles on the tiled laundry room floor. There was a small pile for whites, a larger pile for colours, and a comparatively gigantic pile for blacks. The bulk of the black pile was her clothing, as that was all she ever wore. It amazed her that none of her friends—or her husband, for that matter—had ever asked her why.
She loaded the washer, put the soap in, and left it to its quiet ministrations. In about twenty minutes, she’d be back to mess with the laundry again. Her washer and drier, she realized, were also wonderful inventions. She hated having to wash clothing by hand.
From there it was back upstairs to the kitchen. There were some dishes in the sink that needed attending to, and since their dish washer was broken, she washed them herself. Washing dishes wasn’t so bad. She hummed as she went through the stack, placing each dish in the drying rack as she went.
That done, she ran through her mental checklist of things to do. While contemplating, a headline on that day’s newspaper caught her eye.
Yet another puffed up politician had apparently decided that the country’s gun laws were too stringent. She sneered at the idea that anyone and everyone ought to be able to own a gun, no matter the danger to everyone else. On the one hand she disagreed with it. On the other, she knew her husband was vehemently opposed to such ideas. With an annoyed glare, she picked up the paper and dumped it into the wastebasket.
The living room needed vacuuming, so she started on that chore next. She really didn’t clean unless they were expecting company, which indeed they were. A couple of their friends would be coming over in a few days for dinner, and so the house needed to be tidied.
It was pretty odd, being a housewife. She hadn’t been described as “domestic” in quite a long time. But the business world held no excitement for her anymore, and she was happy to stay at home. Besides, if they ever managed to have the children they wanted, someone needed to be with them during the day.
She lifted the couch cushions to vacuum the couch beneath them and hoped her husband would enjoy seeing his friends. The day they were supposed to come over had been a very dark day in his life. He relived it all over again every year, and this year she wanted to keep his mind off it. That night had been horrible. Even the raucous noise from the vacuum couldn’t distract her from thinking about it.
Her father in-law had been an alcoholic. One day he lost everything in a bad investment and soon after began drinking heavily. In the span of a year he went from being a kind, loving husband and father to an addicted, abusive tyrant. He could barely hold a job. His wife, who was disabled, couldn’t work. Eventually enough was enough and he snapped.
His son had only been eight years old when he woke up one night to the sound of his mother screaming. Carefully, so as not to invoke his father’s wrath, he’d gone to see what was going on. He crept into the living room just in time to see his father beat his mother to death, and then, in despair, eat his own handgun.
She shuddered. To see such a thing at such a young age… It was no surprise to her that, even despite counseling, he’d ended up on a very dark path. He essentially ended up turning into his father.
At his lowest point he’d been arrested for assault and battery. Given his family history, he’d been sentenced to mandatory counseling rather than jail time. That was how the two of them had met. Her sister had been his therapist and then she and he had somehow crossed paths. She didn’t remember the exact details anymore.
That was fifteen years ago. He’d gotten his life back on track since, though things hadn’t been perfect all the time. Alcohol still held its sway. He still got abusive when drunk. But she hadn’t left. They were bonded in more ways than marriage and mere legality.
Realizing she’d managed to make a full circuit of the living room—twice—she shut off the vacuum. Time had slipped away from her. Now it was half passed one and she still had to mop the kitchen and dining room.
This was by far the most demanding chore, and she laughed at her own grunts of effort. It wasn’t all that long ago that she was able to take down grown men in hand to hand combat. Now here she was sweating at the top of a mop handle. Suburban life had made her soft, that was for sure.
At around quarter to two she heard her husband’s car in the driveway. He slammed the sedan’s door with some force, and she could tell he’d had a hard day at work. She set the mop aside and went to open the door for him.
He stormed in gruffly, clearly upset over more than just a rough work day. Still, she was determined to stay cheery. “Hello, love. Bad day at work?”
“Yeah,” he snarled, “They let me go. I walk in first thing this morning and Mr. Rigens comes in and tells me to pack up my desk.”
“First thing—then where have you been all afternoon?”
He marched into the kitchen and got some orange juice from the refrigerator. “I needed a drink. I just…I just can’t take this anymore.” His voice was full of desperation.
She followed him and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, sweetie, it’ll be all right. I’ve still got some money in the bank, we’ll be—”
He looked at her as if he suddenly realized just who he was talking to. With betrayal written plain on his face, he moved away from her. “Don’t you touch me.”
She blinked in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t you touch me. I know you’re sleeping around behind my back. I don’t wanna be touch by no cheatin’ bitch like you.”
“I—what on Earth are you talking about?” She was honestly amazed. How could he ever think that she would cheat on him?
“I found his underwear. Pair’a boxers with the name Gnay—Ner—N-somethin’ embroidered on ‘em.”
She bit her lip. How the hell was she going to explain this one?
“They’re mine,” she said truthfully.
He threw his empty juice glass into the sink, causing it to shatter into a million pieces. “Don’t you lie to me, dammit!”
She backed up against the counter, afraid of the fury that suddenly darkened his eyes. She’d seen that look dozens of times before, from other lovers distantly removed from her current life. And just as she always had been before, she was afraid.
Her husband grabbed her arm suddenly, the tips of his fingers digging into her bicep. “Don’t lie to me,” he said quietly, dangerously.
“Th-they’re mine. Honestly.” She could kill her sister for that gift, and herself for bringing it into the house.
He lashed out at her, cracking her across the face with the back of his free hand. Already there were tears stinging her eyes. “DON’T LIE TO ME!” he roared.
She broke away and made for the front door. But she hadn’t expected him to start throwing things.
He ranted and screamed at her, calling her a slut and an ungrateful whore. She ducked the projectiles he lobbed at her, his aim amazingly accurate despite his inebriation. Her hand was on the doorknob when the head of the mop came down on her own with the force of a club.
The world spun and she went down. Her body erupted in pain as the mop fell again and again, the man she loved holding nothing back. Ribs cracked under the weight of the blows. Bruises were forming all over her body. There was nothing she could do to fend him off, and not even unconsciousness would save her. She screamed at him to stop but he didn’t hear her. She tried everything she could think of to end it and nothing would work.
Finally the world spun again and her hair erupted in flame. Her vision grew foggy and myopic. She stood up, now that her husband, dumbstruck at the sudden combustion, had fled to the other side of the room. He stared at her, certainly wondering why she wasn’t screaming in agony from the fire. Then his drink-addled eyes caught hers and widened in horror. She didn’t need a mirror to see why; she knew they were glowing bright red.
The room around her continued to grow dimmer. Nothing could prevent what was about to happen now—
Detective Greye sat down behind his desk, picking up the topmost file on a massive stack. He coughed into his hand and swallowed, then reached for his coffee. His five year-old had picked up a cold somewhere—at school, no doubt—and had evidently taken the idea of sharing to heart. Greye tried to fight it but finally had to give in and take a sick day yesterday. He wished he hadn’t.
“Still feeling crummy, eh?” his partner Alex observed from his own chair.
“Yeah. Lou said he wanted me in on this one, though. Care to fill me in?”
“Sure.” Alex got up and came around to perch on the corner of Greye’s desk. He angled the file so he could see it better. “Homicide in suburbia,” he began. “Seems this Harry Gatzer was disemboweled with some kinda sword. Some friends were visiting, found the door unlocked, and found him strung out across the living room. ME says he’d been dead at least four days.”
“And nobody missed him?”
“His boss said he’d just gotten laid off the day he was murdered. I have to wonder if that’s what started this whole thing.” As he was speaking, he was fishing a photo of the murder weapon out of the file folder. He handed it to his partner, who examined it with interest. The sword was clean and tagged and sitting against a background that Greye knew well. The guys in the evidence room rarely used a different table.
Greye let out a low whistle. “Wow, that’s a really nice katana. Replica?”
“Actually, no. That’s the first strange thing about this case.”
Greye interrupted him with an incredulous look. “There’s more than one? Helluva day to be sick.” He sipped his coffee as Alex continued.
“I just got a fax from an expert saying that thing is an authentic twelfth century sword used primarily by Japanese warriors. What it’s doing here in the States in 2004 I have no idea.”
He studied the photo in front of him with new reverence. He was quite fond of swords, especially antique ones. “Yeah, don’t they generally not let these out of Japan?” Alex shrugged. “Ok. Next?”
“The only suspect we have is the wife, Mrs. Carynne Gatzer.” Alex fished a picture of Mrs. Gatzer out of the folder. She was a pretty woman, probably in her early twenties with red hair and green eyes. She looked like a friendly sort. “Her neighbors saw her pull into the driveway around noon. No one saw her leave, but we haven’t been able to find her yet. We’re checking local hospitals and morgues.”
Greye looked at his partner in astonishment. “Hospitals and morgues? What for?”
“There were two blood types found at the scene and on the weapon. The victim’s, obviously, and, based on DNA analysis from some of the bathroom garbage, the wife’s. Early estimates say she lost about three pints of blood.”
Those in the room around them continued about their business despite the gruesome—and very bizarre—story that was unfolding at Greye’s desk.
His eyes widened. “Ouch. Did hubby fight back?”
Alex shook his head. “No idea. My theory is she probably tried to kill herself after murdering her husband, got scared, patched herself up, and went somewhere to hide out.”
“That’s as good a theory as any, I guess.” He began looking through the rest of the file, satisfied that Alex had filled him in on enough of the details.
“The weird thing—I mean, the second weird thing—is that the lab wasn’t able to determine her blood type.”
Greye raised an eyebrow at him. “They sure they didn’t just have a bad sample?”
“They tested it six times. It matches no known blood type.”
“That is weird.” He pulled a picture of an equally attractive blonde from the file. “This her sister?”
Alex craned his neck to look at the photo. “Oh, yeah. Carlyna Moier in Tulsa. Lou’s gotten in contact with their local PD. We should be hearing back from them in a day or so.”
Greye nodded. “So I guess it’s time to start contacting every big auction house we can think of and see if anyone remembers this sword. Maybe the Gatzers or someone they knew was a collector.” His hand froze over the telephone as the machine sprung to life. He picked it up after first ring and held the receiver to his ear. “Hello?”
His day immediately got worse.
“Gone? What do you mean it’s gone? How can it be gone? All right. We’ll be down in just a minute. I want to go over ever inch of the surveillance tape I can lay my hands on. It couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air.” He hung the phone up and rose to his feet. “You’ll never guess.” Alex looked at him expectantly. “Evidence just called. Our antique samurai sword? It just disappeared.”
Alex stood up himself. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope. Zeke said there hasn’t been anyone down there all morning, either.” He packed up the file on his desk and headed for the door, Alex in tow. “Why do I get the feeling that Mrs. Gatzer and this sword will never be seen again?” |
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