“Father,” Julian began after a pause. “You do understand what you’re saying here? If what you believe is true, it means that Charlie Fischer had to keep this a secret once he discovered feeling had returned to his legs. That he had to exercise himself for weeks, or months, without Kitty knowing: prolonged and denied himself the pleasure of walking out in the fresh air; all these things, just so that when he was strong enough, he could both surprise and kill her. Do you understand what all that would mean — the hatred, the… the evilness?”
Both men remained silent for several moments, then the chief spoke once more. “What do you expect me to do with this?”
“You cannot arrest this man?” Father Gregory asked in obvious disappointment.
“Based on what?” the chief fired back. “I don’t intend to haul him before an ecclesiastical court, Father. I need proof, or at least a good circumstantial case.”
The cleric was not to be deterred. “Is Mr. Fischer not a good suspect? And one that sits like a spider in this web of suspicious circumstances? If he could walk, would you not be interrogating him at this moment?”
“If he could walk, Father…”
Someone cleared their throat and the two turned to find the ambulance driver standing awkwardly in the doorway to the kitchen. “The M.E.’s people have taken Mrs. Fischer,” he said quietly. “Should I get Mr. Fischer loaded up now?”
It had been Chief Hall’s intention to have the victim’s husband evaluated by the emergency-room physician for stress and shock, as he had been a witness, at least an audible witness, to the horror of his wife’s murder. He stared blankly back at the plump, unshaven young man awaiting his answer, even as he felt the eyes of Father Gregory upon him.
“No,” he murmured, “not just yet, Justin. Give me a few minutes with the poor man.”
Unconcerned, Justin nodded and began to back out of the room.
“Oh, and Justin,” Julian halted the young man’s escape. “You’ve got an EMT riding with you… right?”
Justin nodded in perplexity. “Yeah, Chief, we’ve always got one on board… you know that.” Then another thought occurred to him. “Is someone else hurt, Chief? We thought there was just the one victim.”
“No,” Julian reassured him, “the only victim was Mrs. Fischer… just checking, that’s all.”
As the young man completed his exit, Julian extracted a long needle from a pile of sewing that lay in a basket next to the couch, and held it up to the light. “I have been assured that he has no feeling from the waist down,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.
Father Gregory stared at the needle gleaming like truth in the dim obscurity of the room. “You are indeed a man of faith, Chief J,” he said admiringly.
“Probably an unemployed one as of tomorrow,” Julian replied, as the policeman and the priest approached the closed door at the end of the hallway.
The arraignment of Charles Fischer for the murder of his wife created a small sensation as the facts of the matter were made public. Chief Hall, for his part, received a letter of censure from the county prosecutor for his rather extraordinary actions in exposing the killer. Surprisingly, though, the accused chose not to challenge the probable cause that led to his arrest but, instead, accepted a plea bargain that guaranteed him twenty-five years in prison — a certain death sentence at his age. This was a decision he declined to discuss with the press, except to say that he was, indeed, guilty of the crime of which he stood accused and was deeply sorry.
Charles Fischer’s thoughts and feelings, beyond those few words, remained private to all but his confessor, Father Gregory Savartha, who was most pleased to have been able to grant absolution to the wretched man, knowing that he was truly contrite, and now restored to full humanity.
Lesson Plan
by Naben Ruthnum
Like a number of other EQMM writers, Canadian Naben Ruthnum has had another artistic career, as a rock musician. He spent the past ten years in Vancouver where he played in a rock band called Bend Sinister. He wrote “Lesson Plan” between tours with the band, then decided that the touring life wasn’t for him. He is now pursuing a master’s degree in English at McGill University, where, he tells us, he just finished a novel in the vein of Kingsley Amis.
I walked out of the school, past my overdressed and insultingly young boss, past the helpless secretary. I was clutching Grace’s narrow forearm through her sweater. It felt like two hot twigs wrapped in cashmere. I took her up the stairs so fast she had to hop. Outside, it happened to be as cold and rainy as people imagine Seattle is year-round. We stood under the canopy for a moment without talking, which is funny. She was the only person I’d had an honest conversation with since I arrived in this city.
With most people, I wouldn’t know how to begin talking about my work. And I certainly don’t want to, which again seems a little funny, as my day job involves talking and little else. I’ve managed to find the separation that self-helpers are always talking about: My job isn’t my work. But my work does come out of my job.
I moved to Seattle right after university, coming out West with hopes of finding a band, getting in on a music scene that I’d been picturing in my head. I soon found out it didn’t exist. My bass sat around unused. So did I. I grabbed the first job I could get, teaching ESL — that’s English as a Second Language — at one of the dozens of schools in town, this one not too far from the shimmering seafood-and-tourist reek of the fish market.
ESL had been my fallback job all through university, the work that kept my small gut full of beer and my nose entertained with whatever I felt like snuffing up there. After my first couple of years teaching, I did what I’d forbidden myself from doing — I slept with a student.
Eun Hee was, of course, my favorite student, a cute Korean girl who had a fair number of interesting things to say. It’s painful for me to recall most of the dialogues I had in the identical gray booths of the identical schools I taught at, but hers stood out.
“Yeah, I like baseball, okay, yeah, Koreans do,” she said the first day, impatient at being asked the same question twice. I’d lost concentration. Teaching conversation is harder than it seems — you’re being paid to extend small talk that you’d usually be screaming to get away from into hour-long dissertations on emptiness. The students bored me, and I bored them. Eun Hee could talk, though. Her English wasn’t perfect, but her interests were. Restaurants, getting drunk, gangster movies, noisy rock, and the inevitable end to that sequence. We spent time together outside of class, and even though we weren’t really dating, we were doing something. She quit the school and spent her time with me for the rest of her couple of months in town. On her last morning, she gave me an envelope.
“What’s this?” I was practically unconscious from our third bout between the sheets in as many hours. I don’t usually screw to impress but I didn’t know the next time I’d have such regular access to a pretty girl, so I was getting the most out of it.
“It’s for you. Present,” she said, getting up and picking a soft towel off the floor to wipe the sweat from her body. She unzipped her already-packed suitcase and picked out a few things to put on for her flight back to Seoul.
“What present? You don’t need to get me a present.” Especially a green present in an envelope that had this kind of weight. I told her I wasn’t a gigolo.
“What?”
“Gigolo. Like prostitute, but a man.”
She snapped on her bra. She always put her bra on before any other piece of clothing, and I liked that. “I learned more from you and had more fun with you than in the conversation school. That, in envelope, is my last two months’ tuition. I got a refund. And now you get it.”