Carolyn and I had just sat down to dinner when the screaming started. Her raised eyebrow and heavily dramatized sigh reminded me that I had promised to change my ringtone. I mouthed the word, “Sorry,” as I pulled my phone from my pocket, silencing the scream.
“Hess,” I growled into the phone.
“Buckle up, partner.” Frank, my partner on the homicide squad, really needed to get a new line. This one was starting to wear thin. “We’ve got a vic.”
My phone pinged. “I just sent you the address. You gotta see this one. The guy’s a clown.”
“Meatloaf.”
“What?”
“It’s meatloaf tonight. My favorite.” I watched Carolyn pick up my plate and head to the kitchen to wrap it for later. The thing is, meatloaf is never as good the second time around.
“Jill…”
“Yeah, I know, the clown.” I strapped on my duty holster and gun, then grabbed my jacket. “I’ll be right there.
Thoughtful, even when pissed at me, my girlfriend handed me a go mug filled with coffee. I reached for it. She pulled it back out of reach.
“You did not just do that.” Carolyn’s beautiful brown eyes scolded me.
“Sorry, baby.” I planted a kiss on her lips, and she handed me the coffee.
We had an unspoken understanding. Because of the risks inherent in my job, we never parted without a kiss. It had grown into almost an OCD thing with her. If she got her kiss, I’d come home alive.
As I pulled out into traffic, ignoring the inconsiderate jerks whose brakes squealed as they narrowly avoided smashing into my old Toyota Corolla, I wondered at Frank’s choice of words. It wasn’t like him to use a putdown like that. Maybe for a perp but never for a vic.
I sucked back the coffee on route. It was going to be a long night without dinner; I was going to need another. The drive to the crime scene took me right past a Starbucks. I pulled into the drive thru. I liked my coffee basic and hot. None of those fancy concoctions for me. When I bought, Frank drank the same. Americano, black.
Phil, a uniform who looked a lot like young Donnie Osmond, saw my car coming. The patchwork red and rust Corolla was hard to miss. He tried to head me off at the pass, but I drove right past him up onto the lawn. I wasn’t going to walk. The uniforms should have left me a spot near the house.
Phil opened the driver’s door. “Jill, you gotta stop parking on vics’ lawns.”
I gave him my sweetest smile, the one Carolyn told me looked like a loan shark collecting from a delinquent account. “I will, just as soon as you start reserving a spot for me closer to the door.”
Frank met me at the door. I shoved his coffee into his hands. “What have we got?” I asked.
“I told you, the vic’s a clown. He’s upstairs in the office.”
I side-eyed him, then held my free hand out to tell him to lead the way. He slurped his coffee and grimaced.
“I hate black coffee. You’ve been my partner for four years and you still buy me black coffee.” Frank pushed past me, handing the coffee back. Some people are just ungrateful.
Needing a free hand, I handed Frank’s drink off to a uniform and followed him through a short hallway and up the stairs to the second level of the house.
We pushed through the uniforms standing outside the door. It was less crowded inside. Forensics was there, as well as Karl, the camera guy who still hadn’t figured out I wasn’t into men.
The office was bigger than my living room. In addition to the requisite desk and bookcase, a big-screen TV took up a good chunk of one wall and below it, sprawled sideways across a treadmill, lay the vic.
“Holy crap, the guy’s a clown.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Frank said, shaking his head.
“A literal clown.” I stepped around Karl, who furiously snapped pictures of the scene, ignoring his protests. I had to see this. The guy needed to learn some consideration.
The vic looked to be no more than five feet tall, dressed in a gray sweatshirt and pants. An oversize clown shoe covered his right foot. His left, decidedly average in size, was bare, the other shoe lying beside it. Full clown makeup, along with one of those wigs with a bald top and frizzy orange hair on both sides made it impossible to identify any other distinguishing features. Well, except for the clown makeup and the bullet hole in his chest leaking blood all over the treadmill and floor.
Trailing down from the typical drawn on teardrop, a line of shakily-drawn blue drops ran down the rest of his face, along his sweatshirt, and down his sweatpants. A crocodile dog toy lay beside the drops drawn on his chest.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“Name’s David McBeal,” Frank answered.
“The David McBeal? The guy whose circus got shut down last year for animal cruelty?”
“One and the same.”
“All right then. Looks like we’ve got somewhere to start.” As I turned my eyes to the details of the room, I noticed a man standing quietly in the corner to the right of the door. He held an envelope, and his eyes were fixed on McBeal with what I could only describe as something akin to satisfaction.
“Who are you?” I asked, giving him my full attention.
The man, lean and mean in a denim shirt and jeans, stepped forward and held out his free hand. I looked from it to his face, declining to take it.
“Um, I’m Al Mickle, one of Dave’s ex-brothers-in-law.” He looked at his hand as if it belonged to someone else, then lowered it to his side. “I’m a process server. I’m here to deliver this.”
He held up the envelope. I snatched it from his hand. His eyes went wide as I ripped it open.
“You can’t…”
“Don’t bother,” Frank said, peering over my shoulder. “She won’t listen.”
The papers inside were from an unpaid supplier. They were suing for fifty grand. I peered over the paper at Mickle. “Why are you serving this to him?
Mickle laughed. “I volunteered. I’ve served him five others just like it over the last few months. It’s kind of been my revenge after the way he treated my sister.” His eyes darted to the dead man then back to me. “But I didn’t do this. I mean, why would I? It was more fun watching him go bankrupt. The guy’s a monster.”
Despite his denial, I decided to bring Mickle down to the station for questioning. He had said he was only one ex-brother-in-law. How many did the guy have? It turned out, too many.
```
“Six? This clown talked six women into marrying him? What number was your sister?”
“She was only number two,” Mickle said. “I got that. When he badmouthed number one, it seemed believable. I can’t imagine being number six and listening to him badmouth five women, though. I bet she felt stupid when she realized the truth.”
Mickle was a fount of information. Turned out he and his family had stayed friendly with McBeal’s parents. They hated him as much as everyone else. But he was their only kid, so they couldn’t make themselves cut ties. They were the source of Mickle’s information on wives three through six. Apparently, wife six had had enough a year ago. She had moved out of state. No one knew where.
I thanked Mickle for his time and let him go after telling him not to leave town. Frank rolled his chair over to my desk. “Guy sounds like a real catch. I wonder which ex-wife did him in.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe all of them. Maybe none.” I tapped my pen on the notepad in front of me. Mickle had given me McBeal’s parents’ address. I tore off the page I had written it on. “Let’s see what they have to say.”
```
A squad car was parked on the street outside McBeal’s parents’ house, a small, cottage-style home on a tree-lined street. I pulled the Toyota into the empty driveway. The passenger door creaked as Frank got out. I needed to oil that.
“You need a new car,” Frank grumbled. “It’s not like you can’t afford one.”
I scowled at him, refusing to even discuss it. The old car had a few years left in it. Besides, I’d finally broken it in so the driver’s seat was just the way I liked it.
A uniform opened the door before I could knock. “Saw you coming through the window.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, pushing past.
Inside, the living room was sparsely, but nicely furnished, with photos of women and children scattered around the living room. Pictures of the couple’s son were conspicuously absent. McBeal’s parents looked to be in their eighties. Could be nineties. Who could tell with old people? Neither looked like they’d been crying.
I raised an eyebrow at the uniform. “Do they know?”
“Yeah,” he answered, leaving it at that. He approached Mr. McBeal, who sat next to his wife on a floral sofa. “I’m sorry for your loss.” He nodded awkwardly and headed for the door, shaking his head.
“Who are you?” Mr. McBeal said, his voice quavering. “Are you with the police as well?”
“I’m detective Hess,” I answered. “And this is my partner, Frank.”
“So you’re here about Dave, then.” Mrs. McBeal’s voice was steadier than her husband’s.
I took a closer look at the man. He seemed emaciated and somewhat jaundiced.
He laughed. “I get that a lot these days. Won’t for much longer, though.”
I quirked an eyebrow. This isn’t the conversation I had imagined having with McBeal’s not-so-grieving parents. “No?”
“No. I have liver cancer. They tell me I’ve only got a few months left.”
That surprised me. Not the dying part but that he had as much as a few months. He looked ready to go. And maybe that was the answer.
“Mr. McBeal, forgive me, but you don’t seem too broken up by your son’s death. Or surprised either, for that matter.”
McBeal’s head started to nod. It kept nodding, like one of those bobble-head dogs people keep in their cars. “I’m not.” His head stilled, his watery-blue eyes fixed on mine. “I shot him. Him and his crocodile tears. He never cried a real tear for anyone but himself in his life.”
My mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Nope. I had nothing. This old man had just confessed to murdering his only son like he was offering me a cup of tea.
His wife’s surprise looked genuine, but there was no hint of reproach or anger in her voice when she said, “You told me you were going to the lawyer to finalize the changes to your will.”
McBeal took her hands in his, squeezing them. “I did that. And then I went to Dave’s house and told him we’d cut him out. He threatened to do to you what he did to Dottie if I didn’t change it back.”
Head spinning, I looked from one to the other. “Who’s Dottie and what did he do to her?”
Mrs. McBeal’s eyes filled with the tears she hadn’t cried for her son. “She was my dog. Dave couldn’t stand me having something to love other than him when he was a teenager. I always suspected he had been the one to poison her…” She broke down completely, sobbing over her long-dead dog.
It seemed McBeal Junior had always been a bastard. His animal cruelty hadn’t started with his circus. I wanted to spare this couple, who had clearly suffered so much at his hands, but I had to ask the husband, “And you shot him?”
“I did. He cried and cried when that dog died. It was a lie. All of it. Damned crocodile tears.” He hung his head, his eyes dry. “Who would protect my Annie when I’m gone? Who would keep him from hurting her?”
Mrs. McBeal scooted closer to her husband. “George, you shouldn’t have done this. They’re going to arrest you.”
“I’m going to die anyway, Annie.” The old man sat up straighter. “I’m ready. The gun is upstairs in my bottom dresser drawer. You probably want to call that nice officer back in here.”
I had never wanted to make an arrest less. “I’ll make this as easy as possible for you, Mr. McBeal. Given the circumstances, we can probably get you released home. They might not even bother with a trial.”
McBeal Senior squeezed his wife’s hands, then struggled to his feet. “Thank you, detective. I appreciate it.” He shuffled out from behind the coffee table, then winked at me, grinning. “At least I’ll never have to look at those ridiculous Ronald McDonald feet again.”
This Jill Hess story started brewing more than a year ago. I got about eight hundred words in and had no idea where to go with it. I came back to the story every now and again but never gained any insight into it until now. For some reason, ideas just started to come together in the shower today, starting with the crocodile. The brother-in-law and ex-wives followed, and then I realized the vic had been a monster to everyone all his life. That’s when it all fell into place.
If this is your first introduction to Jill, you can read the rest of her stories in order by following the links below. Happy reading!
It's funny how ideas percolate on their own timetable. I loved this latest Jill Hess story!
Creepy clowns! Great story, like Coke Zero. Thanks, Dascha.