Shred of Evidence

Hearing about a suicide was not my idea of the perfect wake-up call, especially after a middle-of-the-night emergency hospital visit. But when the frantic voice startled me from a deep sleep at 6 a.m., I threw on a pair of sweatpants and a tee shirt and hopped into the Jeep Sahara without hesitation. Two seconds after keying the ignition, I made a call to the local police chief, Lee Prestwick.

“For Pete’s sake, Doc, can’t you call at a civilized time?” The Chief growled, giving the impression she was still lazing about in bed. But I knew better. From when we were kids, Lee had always been an annoyingly early riser. By this time, she’d already run through her exercise routine, and was just settling down for her second cup of French Roast coffee.

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Sam didn’t come to San Francisco for its spectacular scenery, its hills, its cable cars or any of the countless attractions that made the city unique. He didn’t even want to come, had fought the urge for years. But now, despite his reluctance, he found himself on a boat in San Francisco Bay as it made its way slowly through the gently rolling water. The water’s calmness was deceptive. It was a treacherous bay, Sam knew, with undertows and currents that could overwhelm the strongest swimmer.

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I didn’t have much to show for forty years hard work other than my little house, but it was my place, my sanctuary, and I loved it like I would have done the children I could never have.

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I never slept much as a little girl. To this day, I’m not sure why, but I think it had to do with the silence. It had its own peculiar sound, something I was first aware of around the age of four. A soft humming that I could ignore all day when I was playing outside with my little brother Johnny or visiting with the horses and cows and dogs that lived on the farm with us. But at night, after my mother tucked me in and sang lullabies to me by my bed, the sound would take over. I tried to make it go away, tried to make myself sleep.

I never could.

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What Lena relished most was working up in the loftiest reaches to a red oak. A mid-April morning such as this one made it glorious. She was almost there, too. A winter spent working with weights had strengthened her upper body to facilitate tree-scaling. In a crotch of the trunk, she paused to catch her breath. An antsy hand patted down pockets. Her cigarettes were in the plaid shirt pocket.

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It was in the fall of 1891 that I received a telegram from the Reverend Charles Dodgson, inviting me to his residence in Guildford, Surrey. It was not for a medical consultation, but of vital importance to the present trial of the Moriarty gang: the key to Professor Moriarty’s cipher.

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I have published in Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock, Shots, Orchard Press Mysteries, HandHeld Crime and Judas E-zine. I have also published extensively in the children’s field.

Sarah Weinman is a writer and editor whose short fiction has appeared in Plots With Guns, Pindeldyboz, Crime Spree, and Hardluck Stories, and is forthcoming in the Dublin Noir and Baltimore Noir anthologies. She may be reached at her weblog, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, at http://www.sarahweinman.com.

Blog: http://wistling.livejournal.com
E-mail: wistling@gmail.com

A Canadian linguist who writes fantasy and mystery fiction in his spare time, Tony Pi’s fiction and poetry have been recently accepted for publication in Aoife’s Kiss and On Spec.