Brigits_Flame February Entry 02 - Flat.
Sharkey called me at three in the morning. Of course I was asleep.
“Th’fug d’you want?” I said. Hannah rolled over next to me, wakened by my cell phone. She muttered into my collarbone, “Who is that?” and I said it was Sharkey and she went back to sleep.
“Hold on,” I said into the phone. I rolled out of the bed and crept down the hall into the kitchen so I wouldn’t disturb Hannah, and sat at the table in my underwear.
“Okay. I’m ready.”
Sharkey’s voice came in steady and untired. Sometimes I hate her. “There’s another one.”
“Oh, for Chrissake - ”
“Hey, it’s not like I’m the one killing ‘em.”
“You are not above my suspicion, Jolenna. How soon do I need to put pants on?”
“Meet me at the station in fifteen. Okay?”
“If I have to.”
“You do.”
Jolenna Sharkey is my partner. We are homicide detectives. Musical homicide detectives.
Welcome to Harmonicus.
It’s a nice place, when there aren’t serial killers running around. Sharkey and I cover a pretty wide swath of the city as our beat. Sometimes we see the guy they call The Human Chord. Once he saved me from a mugging. But a superhero can’t do much for people that are already dead.
“That’s brutal,” I said, looking at the corpse. Sharkey took another picture.
The woman’s head, or what remained of it, was mostly obscured by the child-sized lead piano that had smashed it in. It had dropped from her ceiling when she opened the door to her apartment. A trap.
By her head lay a CD in a jewel case; it looked as though she had been holding it when she opened the door, because elsewhere on the floor was a ripped-open security envelope. I pointed out the CD to Jolenna, who photographed it. I put it in an evidence bag, along with the envelope.
“I think the envelope was wedged under the door,” Jolenna said.
“And she picked it up, opened it, and walked in the apartment,” I said. “Sure. But why is she lying on her side?”
“Her hands were full.” She demonstrated. “She twisted the doorknob as best she could with stuff in her hands, and then bumped the door open with her hip. She came in sideways and tripped the drop-wire on that piano.”
“Who kills someone with a lead piano? Who even makes lead pianos? Who would make lead pianos in that size?”
Sharkey shrugged. “A crazy person.”
A crazy person. We called in the clean-up crew and went back to the Forensics Lab.
The Forensics Lab, for whatever reason, has a great stereo system. Sharkey popped the CD in and I dusted the jewel case for prints - none but the dead woman’s. Sharkey hit ‘play’ for the first track.
“Detectives,” it began. A man’s voice, masked digitally. I started. Sharkey rolled her eyes. The voice continued, “There are many reasons to kill an opera singer. This is chief among them.”
There was a sort of a clicking noise, and then track two began - an aria from La Traviata. Oh my God.
“Che far degg’io?/ Gioire, di voluttà nei vortici perire!” A woman’s voice, now. A lovely woman’s voice but OH GOD.
“Jesus Christ!” said Sharkey.
It was painful. She could sustain a note beautifully, but not at the right pitch. She was flat. Flat, flat, flat and it hurt our ears and made me tear up in agony. The woman playing Violetta wailed on and on - I thumped the table with my fist. I pulled my knees together and bent over the table in horror. My stomach twisted. My genitals hurt. And when it couldn’t get any worse it suddenly stopped.
Track three. The man’s voice again. “That is the woman you found dead tonight. Tell me she did not deserve to die.”
I pulled myself off the table. “No. No, people have a right to pursue what they love.” I clutched my stomach. “Oh, God.”
“Why are you talking to the CD?” said Sharkey.
“You are what you sing,” said the voice. “She was flat, so she was flattened.”
“It’s challenging us,” I said. “It’s trying to test the bounds of justice!”
“I will continue to kill,” said the voice, “until these men and women stop making recordings. I will shame them into retirement. That is all. Have a good evening.”
No fourth track.
“Heavy,” I said. “Let’s stop some crimes.’
“Word,” said Sharkey.