Bunnies!
Fake Pockets!
SHEEP!
First off I thought it was really cool when I realized that the cover art was not fire but hair. Secondly, I listened to this on audio but I don't feel like I have enough to say about the audio to call this an audiobook review. I have a few audio critiques but the majority will be story focused. Honestly, I feel like most my audiobook reviews are like that so, in the future, I may just call them book reviews.
Gak!
Today my storytime theme was dancing. Since my first story, Yoshi's Feast, featured Japanese dance, I had the kids decorate paper fans for a craft. I brought my kimono and Japanese fan to do the dance in the story. The kids enjoyed the craft, perhaps got a little to in to the dancing, but I kept my audience entertained which is the important part.
It would be a bit of a complex story for some of the kids with shorter attention spans if I just read it it straight. But that's why I always perform a shorter version with the kimono, fan, and money box as my props.
The last book, Down By the Cool of the Pool features a simple rhyme with a bunch of animals dancing. I decided to do a dancing theme after choosing Yoshi's Feast but not finding any other Japanese stories I wanted to tell. I choose the other two books for a gender neutral approach to dance. Too many books talked about little girls taking ballet, so I was happy I found these.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Aster." I said, as the other officers lifted the body out of the kitchen. I'd known Mrs. Aster, Miriam, for forty years, and I'd never thought of her as Mrs. Aster until now. Now, when it no longer mattered.
She wasn't really crying. It was just the sort of shocked horror that you could see sinking into her bones.
The squad car lights were still flashing red and blue into the kitchen, and I wanted to tell the boys to turn it off, but I knew they wouldn't listen to me and the fight would take more time than it was worth. They'd be gone soon.
"It doesn't make any sense, Henry."
I saw the suicide note in an evidence bag on the counter. These guys were sloppy. It'd been a lot cleaner when I first started on the force. But this was a small town, and there really hadn't been much action since that poor girl's murder back in the eighties. These officers who were working now had clearly not been old enough to drink in the eighties.
I snapped out of my reverie when Miriam's hands started shaking. I took the empty coffee mug out of her hands and set it on the counter. It was surreal to see the red and blue lights flashing on the yellow daisies on the coffee mug. But, no matter how I didn't want to, I had to tell Miriam what really happened to her husband.
I took her shoulders, "Miriam, Harris was happy."
“You mean John had something to do with this.” I sort of wished she’d been holding me up. I could of used it when her eyes dared me to pin this murder on her only son.
I couldn’t look at her. I looked at that awful note instead. It was horrible. Harris never would have written something so melodramatic. I wasn’t even the handwriting expert and I could tell it wasn’t his. It must have been the shock that prevented Miriam from recognizing how badly forged the letter was.
“Look, Miriam. I’m going to leave some officers here—”
“No!” I’d never seen her so frantic. It was understandable, but still, it was surreal. “I mean, please, I don’t....”
She didn’t trust anyone else. It was probably the best compliment I’d gotten in my entire life. It was the situation that prevented me from enjoying it. I gently pried her hands off my arms. "Look, Miriam, these are good boys. Young. But good. They can protect you."
She kept me held with her eyes. "That's not what I meant. It's a small town, Henry."
I put my hand on her arm one last time, "There was a party at the station last night when Harris...." Thirty years on the force and I couldn't even say it. "All these guys were at the party. The whole night."
Miriam nodded and looked down at the floor, "Of course."
I pulled away reluctantly and took my hat off the counter, along with the evidence bag. I wished I could just crumple that atrocity of a note up and shove it down the killer's throat. But the structure of police proceedings denied me that privilege. Just like the killer had denied society's structure.
Miriam didn't leave the kitchen, though, as if two horrible things could not happen in the same place. I walked out onto the stoop and looked up at the cars as the screen door swung shut behind me. I addressed two of my favorites, Kenny and Sydney. "You two stay here with Mrs. Aster. The rest of us are going back to the station."
Kenny nodded as he looked up from the ground he'd been inspecting. He stood and dusted himself off as Sydney pulled her hair out of her face and tied it back with a rubber band. "No problem, Sir. We'll take good care of her." She cuffed me in the shoulder and motioned for Kenny to follow her. I got in the car confident that they could take care of her. But that didn't make backing out of the driveway any easier.
However, the moment I was driving down a residential street my thoughts were free to wonder to John. Miriam loved him dearly, but I had no such love for the boy. They may have never proved that he murdered his girlfriend, but I still didn't like him being out on the streets. And John knew how I felt. I hadn't told Miriam, but for a while now, I'd been receiving calls. The caller would just hang up, but I had them traced to John's apartment. I hadn't even had to do anything fancy, just dialed *69. I didn't care how many therapists the courts ordered that boy to. It would never change the fact they'd let a murderer go.
My knuckles turned white on the steering wheel and I eased up a little. But mentally I was as tense as ever. John had come out of nowhere. Miriam had been great. Harris had been great. But John was just one of those psycho flukes. And if he could murder his father....
I drove into the police station parking lot to see Lieutenant Shysterr standing outside with a doughnut in his ham hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other. I got out of the car and he shouted over to me. “How’s Miriam?”
“As good as she can be,” I answered as I slammed the car door shut and looked up at him. “How would you be?”
Shysterr’s pudgy face was solemn. “Horrible, I suppose.” he downed some of his coffee. “So. Was it the psycho son?”
I cast my eyes skyward as I pulled the door to the station open, “Gee, Howard, I don’t know. Maybe you should go ask Miriam if her son called and said he was thinking about murdering his father."
Shysterr reached for his hat. "Okay."
I snorted, and he shook his head as I laid down the evidence bags on the counter. "Look, Henry, I know it's horrible. We all loved Harris, and he'd just retired from here and all. But he would have wanted us to keep up with the work."
"That's why I want to find his killer," I said evenly. I hunched over the counter that was full of photos of Quincy and Jacob, sons of Jenny, the receptionist. Jenny had left a box of doughnuts on her desk along with a pot of coffee. I got behind the desk, far more comfortable than my own, and got to work.
"I wonder if he knows he's crazy." Shysterr said after a long silence. He was fingering important documents and getting chocolate icing on them in the process.
"Hmm...?" I grunted without looking up from my work.
"John. I wonder if he wakes up every morning and thinks 'Gee, what crazy thing should I do today?'"
"I doubt it."
There was a great stretch of silence after that. Shysterr lost interest quickly after our little conversation and went home. I was filling out all the paper work and was not particularly overeager to return to my own empty house.
When I woke up in an uncomfortable hunched position some time later, someone was raising a ruckus in one of the offices. I jolted into sitting up and yanked off the document, clinging determinedly to my forehead. I took my gun off my belt. "Hello?"
There was a pause and then the sound of movement again. I tore towards the sound just to find out it was coming from my own office. The desk was pushed over and papers were scattered all over the floor. Aside from the desk, it didn't really look that much different. The message scrawled on the wall with the ink and the wide open window were what really captured my attention. I raced to the window but there was no one outside. I swore as I backed back into the room and looked up at the message: "You're not sending me back to jail."
"Of course," I whispered to myself. "Of course, you think that, John."
He'd been going through my stuff but luckily I don't keep anything important at the station. I wondered if he'd climbed in the window or gone in through the front door. The front door was more likely because the windows were secured on the outside. He'd gone right past me when I was asleep. I swore under my breath again and kicked some papers. Maybe Harris had been right. Maybe I should have retired last year with him. Not that he was here to say "I told you so."
I sighed as I sifted through the papers waiting to be filled out. There was no way I was going to finish all of this, so I packed up to head on home. Halfway to my street, I decided to swing by Miriam’s house to see how she was doing. I also wanted to see if John was there. It was ridiculous, and all my logic went against his going somewhere so obvious. But I half expected to see him standing in the driveway as I drove up.
Sydney waved as she squinted through my headlights. A few moths darted to the security light as it flicked on lazily at my approach. I hopped out of the car and tucked my keys into my pocket with an overly cheery jangling sound. “Where’s Kenny?”
“Out back.” she grinned. “Didja bring us anything?”
I opened my empty hands, “There were donuts at the office.” I admitted this apologetically. I really should have brought them something to eat.
“Don’t worry about it.” Sydney laughed. “I’m just hassling you. If you run by the take-out just down the street and get us some sandwiches, all will be forgiven.”
I managed a smile even while I marveled that Sydney could smile, when just hours ago she’d seen a dead body. But I had to remind myself that Sydney hadn’t known Harris like I had. She hadn’t gone to the same schools as him and backed him up on the high school football team. I took a deep breath and tried not to be sucked in by the new void, “Is Miriam still awake?”
Sydney shook her head as she sucked in her cheeks soberly, “I dunno. All the lights are out.” Sydney shuddered, “I certainly wouldn’t want the lights out at a time like this but....”
“Energy saving lights,” I explained as I squinted up at the inky black window pane above my head. “They probably turned themselves off. Well, if she actually got herself to sleep, then it’s best to let her.”
I had an unreasonable desire to pull the door open and search the house, but Sydney and Kenny were no fools. If John had come by, they would have known better than to have let him in.
“I’ll just go check on Kenny.”
Sydney nodded in response and I headed around to the side of the house. The security light had switched off as I crossed through the dew covered grass. I was just coming close to the window on the side of the house when I heard a noise and stopped. I was about six feet from being directly under the second story window when I looked up and saw him. Crouched on the outside window sill of his mother's bedroom was John. I couldn’t really see him that well. Everything was in midnight shades. But, the way the hair on the back of my neck prickled, I knew it was him. He seemed to sense my eyes on him and slowly, painfully, turned his head. The shadows created almost a shroud on his face, but the moon left just enough light to see the whites of his eyes and his mouth. His lips, stretched into a silent scream that, with the trick of the shadows, seemed to defy the normal limitations of the human mouth. He just stared at me like that, eyes practically popping out of his head. Then, before I could even draw my gun, he dropped down from the window sill in one fluid movement and disappeared into the trees.
I lurched after him. I could hear him tearing though the foliage frantically like a hunted stag. But I couldn't see him. I took out my gun and shot several bullets into the inky black of the trees, but I still heard him getting away until I knew he was out of reach.
Kenny came running up to me not to long afterwards. "Sir! Sir! Are you all right?"
I put my gun back on my belt, "Yeah, I...." I'd been shooting at shadows. I turned to Kenny. "He got away."
Kenny looked nervously at the trees around him. There are no illusions in a small town. Kenny knew who I was talking about. "Should we call for back up?"
"Good luck finding any. The station's empty. Although, I suppose some squad cars are out patrolling."
Kenny got on the radio just as I was thinking about what I'd done. I certainly hadn't shot in self defense. John had been running.
I stayed the rest of the night even though the others Kenny called came. I certainly couldn't go home after what I'd seen. In the morning, Miriam brought coffee out for us all which was nice to drink in the crisp morning air. She offered to invite us all in, but we were all too polite to go tromping through her kitchen again after yesterday. She held her own steaming yellow-daisies mug as she talked to me. "You should take the day off Henry. You look awful."
I gave her a wry smile, "Thanks." Miriam had never been the type to lie, even to be nice, and I valued her for that.
"There are plenty of cops here to watch over one old lady."
I almost choked on my coffee, "Forty's not old."
Miriam looked down at her coffee, "We'd both like to believe that, wouldn't we, Henry?" She looked back up with strong eyes. "I want you to take the day off Henry, and I mean it. I don't want you collapsing from exhaustion, certainly not on my account."
I couldn't imagine what I could do on such a gray day that was better than looking after such an old friend. But I wasn't about to challenge her at a time like this. "All right, Miriam. You win."
I bid Sydney and Kenny farewell. The other officers were too wrapped up in a loud conversation over coffee for me to get a word in edgewise. I climbed into my car and just drove for a little while, not really sure where I was going. I ended up at the zoo where John worked as a janitor.
The great black iron gates normally looked bright and cheerful with every sort of flower around them. But today the plants didn't show their colors, and the only thing I saw was the design of animals twisted into the black metal. But I convinced myself that I was being melodramatic. I paid the bored looking college student in the booth and parked in a nearly empty lot. It was early on a gray Monday and even the animals saw no point in stirring themselves for so small an audience. I saw a girl janitor sweeping some dusty paper cups and tapped her on the shoulder. She jumped and then saw my jacket and smiled with a relieved breath. I had forgotten to change out of my uniform, and my golden badge still shined bright against my black coat. "Oh, you scared me, Officer Henry. Not many people come around here on a day like this. Is there anything I can help you with?"
At first I was startled that she knew my name, but then I remembered I'd come to talk to a high school about a year ago and had told the seniors to call me Officer Henry in one of those campaigns to make police men look cool and friendly. I had thought it was just as stupid as the kids had but at least this girl remembered me, it seemed, and not my lame jokes. "Does anyone named John work here. John Aster?"
The girl frowned, "Is he in some sort of trouble?" This seemed to be the most interesting conversation she'd had in quite some time, so I decided to humor her. "Well, not officially, but I would like to talk with him."
She nodded and continued to sweep. "Wish I could help you. But John hasn't been coming into work these past few days. I even called his apartment to see if he was all right." She looked at me with concern. "I heard his father was murdered."
I shook my head, "We haven't proved anything yet, but Mr. Aster did pass away this Sunday." I had never called Harris 'Mr. Aster'. That had always been his father. Except now both Mr. Asters were dead, and John might not be alive for much longer.... I shuddered at my own thoughts.
"Thanks for your help," I muttered after a moment of awkward silence.
The girl shrugged. "No problem."
I moved on, hands jammed in my pockets, eyes on the pavement. None of the animals were lively enough to capture my attention today. Besides of which, I'd never been a big fan of zoos. No matter how advanced the "environments" for the animals became, they still looked like cages to me.
I stopped by the outside of the monkey habitat. A little brown chimpanzee pressed his hands against the glass and looked at me as I sat on a bench across from him. After a while a mother and son came by. The son couldn't be more than four or else he would have been at school. The mother smiled and waved at me. I'd probably met her at some function or another and just didn't remember, so I waved back. She had dyed-blonde hair with expressive brown eyebrows, and she cooed at everything the boy said.
"Could I be a monkey, Mommy?"
She crooned out laughter. "If you wanted to, sweetie."
The boy was quiet and mimicked the monkey's movements, or the monkey was mimicking his. I couldn't really tell which. "Mommy, do monkeys know they're monkeys?"
"No, sweetie, I don't think so. They probably think we're the ones in the zoo and they're watching us. I don't think they'd be so happy if they knew they were the one in the cage." I bit my lip. This was probably the most intelligent conversation this mother had had with her son all day so I figured it would be rude to laugh. Eventually they went away and I sat there for a long time. After school hours a few kids trickled by, but mostly it was just me and the chimpanzee, who spent most of his time with his fingers pressed against the glass, looking at me.
"What are you looking at?"
When it came close to closing time, I thought maybe I could swing by John's apartment. I had only promised Miriam I'd take the day off, not the night.
In the night, "The Grove," the apartment complex where John lived, looked worse, if possible, than it did in the day time. Fluids leaked from every car resting in the parking lot that could have passed as a junkyard.
The light in John's apartment was out, but I knew he was home. He had to be. I was just paying a house call. I whistled as I crossed the parking lot, feeling better than I had all day. I jangled my keys as I dropped them into my pocket and climbed the stairs.
There was no security, of course. John had brought it on himself, really. If he hadn't killed his girlfriend, if he hadn't gotten away with it.... The stairwell was dark and my footsteps toward it were the only sound.
It was funny. The police had been sent to this side of town to deal with noise disturbances all the time, and now I was the only one making the noise. A man in a black hooded sweatshirt leaning against the wall didn't even look up as I passed. I climbed the stairs and took my hand off the rail when I discovered it was encrusted in bird waste. When I reached the hall, I pulled my coat closer around me. It was colder than it was outside. There were unrecognizable stains on the carpet that looked as if it had once been a light blue. I knocked politely on John's door. I waited. No answer. He had been watching Miriam last night. He had been waiting. I broke the door down.
The curtains were open and light from the street light right outside his window flooded the rat hole apartment. Papers were everywhere and the only rug was dirty laundry on the floor. I heard a quivering sound from the closet. I jerked open the door and pulled out the inhabitant. The jangling of car keys fell from Johns hands, and I put my own happily jangling keys to his throat. "Planning on going somewhere, John? Like another visit to mommy?"
John started to cry, his skinny body shaking. "If you kill me, it'll be murder."
"Like it was with your father, John?"
All the stupid boy could do was cry, which was why I never saw it coming. One coffee pot to the head later and I was on the floor in a pool of broken glass. One of my eyes wasn't working so well, and the window was open. John was jumping off the roof, onto a car, setting off a car alarm, and running through the parking lot to...my car! My keys were gone, of course, and I watched John speed away.
I took John's keys and took the easier route down the stairs. I had to take his junker which only got me halfway to Miriam's house before it broke down. I watched as John drove out of sight. I cursed and jumped out and ran to my house. It was only a few blocks away and had never seemed far before at any point in town. It was an eternity now, and I had never run so fast in my life. I collided with a girl walking her dog but couldn't even stop to apologize, running through yards and jumping fences.
Once I reached my house, I had to break a window to even get in. I never left anything unlocked and certainly never left any keys outside. Some called me paranoid, but even at a time like this, my belief that I was the only sane one was reinforced by the fact that John was on the loose. And, despite repeated reprimands from me, Miriam left a key under the mat. I grabbed the keys to my regular car and raced the catch up with John, my tires screaming in protest.
My car was already parked in the driveway when I reached the house, but John was no longer behind the wheel. I stumbled from the driver's seat and burst into Miriam's kitchen. The door wasn't even locked.
"Henry?"
Miriam was sitting calmly at her kitchen table drinking tea from her yellow-daisies mug. The rest of the house was dark and the light in the kitchen was dim at best.
"Why are all the lights out?"
Miriam looked at me funny. "Henry. I'm a grown woman. I'm not afraid of the dark. And what happened to your eye? Here, let me--."
I crossed the kitchen to her. "He's here," I hissed.
"He? Who, Henry?" Miriam did not look any less confused than she had when I'd first burst in. Why was it taking her so long to figure it out?
"John," I answered reluctantly and regretted my answer the moment I said it. Miriam's wrath flashed through her eyes. I heard a sound and grabbed a kitchen knife. Where was he? Why was he playing games?
"My son is not a murderer, Henry."
I didn't have time to explain to her. The vision in one of my eyes seemed to be gone completely, and I knew John was crawling around here somewhere. I pulled Miriam to the door. "C'mon, I'll take you to the station. You'll be safe there."
I managed to drag her onto the front stoop before she finally struggled out of my grip. I had a hard time juggling the knife and her, but I didn't have much of a choice. John had taken my gun.
"I'm not going anywhere, Henry! If my son's here, fine. It's been too long since he's seen his mother."
"Don't you understand?!" I yelled louder than I should have. "John's a murderer! You love him and he's a murderer. Why? It's blind." I clutched the knife in my hand tighter at a noise from the bushes.
I reached for Miriam again, but she backed out of the way. "Sometimes love is blind, Henry. Just like you were with me. But that was twenty years ago, Henry. I was married all those twenty years to Harris, and that whole time you hated John. You couldn't bring yourself to hate an old high school chum like Harris, and you could never hate me, but John represented us both together."
There was someone coming now. I could taste it in the air. She was never going to understand. She never really had. All those years.... I felt my hand shaking as I raised the knife and Miriam screamed.
"Freeze!"
I turned. Kenny was standing there in a black hooded sweatshirt with his gun drawn. Sydney had her gun aimed at me from the bushes, and she was holding a leash with a growling police dog pulling at it.
I dropped the knife just as another officer slapped the cuffs on my wrists. "You have the right to remain silent...." Words I had learned by heart and they were now being used against me. I felt numb. I just couldn't feel anything anymore as they pulled me away. All I could do was watch and listen as John ran up to his mother and cried like an infant on her shoulder.
"I'm sorry, mother. I'm so sorry. I never wanted you to be in danger."
She stroked his hair, "Well, I agreed to the operation. If anything, I put myself in danger." She looked at me, unafraid. "I just can't believe it. All those years we trusted him."
And that was the last thing I heard, it seems, before I came here.
Nurse Hillary backed up from Henry after he finished telling his story. His one good eye followed her, but she tried to reclaim the small butter knife from his meal tray without him noticing. She swallowed. "So...that's why you're here?"
Henry laughed. "Well, it was clearly insanity. I barely remember the trial." He continued to chuckle as he laid easily back on his cot. "It's funny that way, don't you think?"
Hillary let out a high-pitched laugh as she backed towards the door. "Yeah, hilarious." Then her voice went a bit lower to the point where she was talking to herself. "Hilarious that I've been sent in this room for the past month without knowing that charming little story." Then, when she realized she'd said these words out loud, she gave Henry a false smile. "I just...have to get your medicine now."
Henry just grinned and shook his head as she rushed out the door and latched it behind her. Just as she did that, Lou waddled down the hall with his cart, the bald spot on his head shined merrily as he whistled. Lou wasn't a doctor, but he was always interested in all the patients. He'd know if it was true.
"Lou!" Hillary waved.
Lou looked up, his great chipmunk cheeks drawn up in a smile, "Yea?"
Hillary moved across the comforting hall of locked doors and gestured toward the room she had just been in, "Did that man really try to kill a woman?"
"Who? Jake or Henry? Cause the stories Jake can tell...."
"Henry."
"Oh, him? Yeah."
Hillary felt the blood rush from her face, "And I've been going in there since January?"
Lou laughed jovially. "So he finally told you the story, huh? Congenial little psycho ain't he?"
Everyone was "little" to Lou, but Hillary had never had to deal with violent patients. Henry had never tried to attack Hillary, which was mainly why she had never suspected. But she was taking this up with the company. She wasn't supposed to be dealing with attempted murderers.
"But he didn't just try to kill Miriam Aster." Lou said, reading her mind. "He killed two other people."
Hillary let out a small squeak, "What?"
"Didn't you listen to his story? John Aster's girlfriend wasn't murdered by John." Lou snorted. "He certainly wouldn't have been involved in a sting operation if he had. But they did think he did it for a very long time. Around the time Harris Aster was murdered, they pulled out the old records and ran some more tests with a suspect they hadn't thought of before. Henry. Turns out Henry really did hate John. Enough to murder his girlfriend and make it look like John did it. Then he seemed satisfied for a while. But when John's suspected murder didn't make Miriam re-evaluate her marriage, I guess he figured he'd bump off his old chum too and have Miriam fall into his arms. Luckily Officers Kenny and Sydney were smart enough to figure the whole thing out and work with John to bring Henry down."
"And I've been going in there since January?!"
Lou put his hands up, "Hey, don't take it out on me. I don't write the charts."
"Well, why didn't you tell me?" Hillary was certainly going to take this out on everyone responsible.
"Look, Henry's harmless unless you're Miriam Aster. He's just got some sort of psycho obsession with her. You've got nothing to worry about."
Hillary turned to look back at the small window in Henry's door. He winked at her.
Query Letters!
Becky left this comment concerning the Caramel DeLites:
I admit that I didn't actually notice the two different names until Becky pointed it out. I don't think I even had a girl scout cookie until I was 16 years old. Caramel DeLite isn't my favorite name because I dislike most things that don't spell properly. But, otherwise, I agree with the Cookie Monster philosophy of the title "C is for cookie, that's good enough for me." To me this expresses the universal truth: A cookie by any other name would taste as sweet.
