Chapter One:  Homicide

Jeff Kozzi

His gloved fist crashed into the old woman’s shoulder. Her hip slammed into the corner of the table. The weakened bone splintered beneath wrinkled, baggy skin. She rebounded, calling a harsh cry of pain and desperation.

"Michael!!"

The television in the living room blared a talk show with volume set too high, compensation for the elderly woman’s diminished hearing. The audience’s jeers at the freak-du-jour smothered her frantic call.

Her assailant sneered as she scrambled against the cracked linoleum.

Michael rose above her, sweat glistening over his young, hard, nude body. A smile crossed his face as he gently straddled her. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. When he rose, he gently lifted her from the kitchen floor. She gasped, panting. They shared radiance.

"Me, twice, at my age," she had whispered.

He smiled, then laughed as gentleness and love melted him further in her arms. "Me, twice, a man," he whispered as he tightened the deep hug. His head passed from her sight, slipping over her shoulder, then he gently nudged her away and fingered her back. He giggled as his finger traced an unseen mark. "Your skin molded in the crack in the linoleum."

"That’s what I get, for having sex in the kitchen at my age," she’d said. "Reginald would just die."

His smile faded. "He is, Dorothy."

Her smile broadened his. "And for years I missed him, Michael. Not anymore."

His backhand caught her face. Her body followed her head in somersault. Her leg twisted. She cried out again, a harsh, unspecific sound that could translate as nothing other than agony. He slapped her again. A tooth dislodged. Blood flavored her mouth.

She grasped for the plastic hunter green strainer that held the freshly washed dishes.

"How could I have spent seventy-three dollars at such a place?" she demanded with a hearty laugh. Her arm gripped Michael’s as he pushed the overfull carriage towards her car.

"You rich bitches," he laughed. "You’ve never discovered the world of Odd Lot shopping!"

She plucked the dish strainer from the carriage and held it with fingers between the slats. Laughing and loving, she looked at him through it, and the green lines divided her picture of him like jail bars. "Designer matching kitchenware at rock bottom prices. Reginald would call anything from anyplace other than Williams-Sonoma worthless!"

He laughed as the metal carriage that still bore an extinct grocery store’s name on the handle rattled over a pothole. "Welcome to my world!"

Pulled by her assailant, Dorothy’s wrinkled fingers caught between the slats of the strainer. The breakfast dishes and silverware hurled across the kitchenette with metal clatters and porcelain smashes. The chopping knife wedged into the floor. Her wizened eyes rolled after it as the looming man struck again. His blows had changed. They struck into her harder now, more lustful in their murderous intent.

She reached for the knife, wrapping her fingers around the black hilt.

"Yeah, right," he sneered as his hand grasped her wrist. The glove leather chafed, and almost burned in its excessive bodily heat.

"Yeah, right," Reginald said when she told him she wanted to invite their accountant to dinner.

"Yeah, right," Reginald said, his face full of contempt.

"Yeah, right," Reginald said when she told him she thought an Alaskan cruise would be a pleasant vacation.

"Yeah, right," Reginald said, arrogance drifting from him like the spray of a skunk.

"Yeah, right," Reginald said when she told him she knew Betty Carson was a permanent secretary because he had screwed her on her desk.

"Yeah, right," Reginald said, laughing in her face as he turned away.

"Yeah, right," Reginald said when she told him she thought she should stay at the summer house without him until they decided whether or not they would—or should—save their stagnant marriage.

"Yeah, right," Reginald said, laughing in her face as he turned away.

"Yeah, right," Reginald said, thousands of times, over and over, in the face of every idea not his own.

"Yeah, right," Reginald said, so dismissively, as if she were nothing, as he turned his back on her, so many times, over and over throughout their marriage and their lives.

Horror-widened eyes photographed the face that loomed intimately close to her own. The look upon it was like nothing from her memory. The features before her now had mutated into things she’d never thought capable. Never before had she taken actual notice of little flecks of blood within the whites of his eyes. Those eyes, always the green of Spanish olives to her before, spotlighted her in coronas of twelve shades of green lighter and darker than her memory.

"Oh, you’re still working," Dorothy said. Her hands touched his shoulders in the genuine casual affection she afforded everyone. "I’ll have Bonita bring you a plate before she is finished."

He raised his head from the glossy cherry secretaries’ desk, where neatly-stacked piles of bills and receipts surrounded him like an encroaching army. The pen in his hand shook. "That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Worthington."

She remembered smiling, if only because he returned it with a bit of surprise. "I could hear your stomach rumbling from the dining room," she had replied. "You’ve been here all day."

The look on his face changed then, suddenly, with panic beset of fatal social blunder. "I’m sorry, Mrs. Worthington! I should have taken everything Mr. Worthington gave to me and sorted it in the office. I thought that if there’s anything I needed, I could get it quicker—give you faster service—get this filed sooner—save you money—if I sorted the prelim—"

"Oh, stop, silly child," she had said. His face melted in response to the strengthened radiance of her smile. "You seem to be a conscientious young man to me, and a hungry one, presently...."

How could she have been so wrong, and so right? She wondered now, in death-throe panic. Yes, he’d been hungry, and he’d been conscientious. She should have said, "you seem to be a conscientious young man presently, and a hungry one."

Overpowering the relative feebleness of her body, he raised the hand the held the knife, drawing the blade on an upswing faster than she could have moved under her own fading power. He twisted in a jerky motion. Her arthritic elbow snapped, crackled, then popped.

She screamed. Her fingers stretched. The knife fell to the floor.

Her assailant threw her broken arm aside and scooped up the knife. The blade glistened under the late-morning sunlight that flooded through the kitchenette window. He took the knife with both hands and hoisted it above his head, blade pointing towards the floor, towards her. His smile spread. His canines glinted like the knife as he bowed his head to her.

The dogs yelped and barked in their pens around them. Her compassion and sympathies twisted about her, as captivating as the chain links surrounding the animals. Yet she was drawn not to the friendly eager puppies and strays, but to the mid-size mongrel at the rear of the center pen. He sat in a puddle of urine.

Michael’s face sagged as he caught her expression. She had barely looked at him then, but now she saw all the concern and love he felt, as much as one human could feel for another. Her gaze passed over him too quickly, and returned to the fences. The yipping dogs seemed ready to jump the ten foot barriers, or break through. Those friendly pups would advance, she remembered fearing. They’d swarm her, nipping at her legs, taking smaller pieces.

All except for the black-and-brown mongrel. He stared at her passively, but the pointed tips of his teeth glinted white against his black lips. Briefly then she had imagined that the cadre of dogs would just knock her down. The strong and silent mongrel would rush to deliver the final blow, a single bite of the neck that would loose her blood from her veins. She gasped.

Michael took her elbows with the gentlest of touches. "Dorothy, I’m sorry," he’d said. "I’m concerned about you there sometimes, but this is worse. You’re afraid of dogs, aren’t you?"

"I was bitten. I was small, a little child. A big black dog."

With firm support, Michael’s hand slipped from her elbow and took her waist. He turned her gently, away from the carnivores, back towards her shiny car.

"No dogs," she had whispered. "No teeth."

"Dorothy, my love, then we’ll consider an alarm...."

She had quickly forgotten that day, until now, when his teeth glared white against the blackness she saw in his soul for the first time.

The knife hovered above her in momentary eternity. That strong and silent dog with the rich black and brown spotting would have prevented this, she knew now, if she had taken him and shown him just an ounce of the compassion she had shown humanity, including this once-conscientious, always hungry murderer. Her murderer.

The knife sliced the air, then her chest.

"Dorothy, you old hag, you’ve made me a rich, rich man."

1.  Homicide

2.  Adam-12

3.  The Practice

4.  Cheers

5.  Family Ties