C.: Well, d.c. is busy working a little overtime, but he wanted me to read the rewrite he did on the beginning of THE MAGRUDER MYSTERIES MURDER 8: THE INERT INGREDIENT. It looks interesting.
INAUGURATION
Almost everything has an inert ingredient. Even the air we breathe is 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. That leaves a full 1% of the air as inert ingredients. The most prevalent inert ingredient in the air is argon gas. Although in minute quantities this gas is harmless, in larger quantities it can be fatal. The same is true of carbon dioxide, the second most prevalent inert ingredient in air. Both can cost someone his or her life if enough of either is inhaled. Each is colorless, odorless, and tasteless. Consequently, neither is easily detected. Some other inert ingredients are also deadly, even in minute quantities. Many are practically impossible to detect...
***
It was a dark, dreary day, which fit the detective's mood perfectly. His first wife was his first true love, and attending her funeral wasn’t something he looked forward to. As much as Jay Magruder loved Alice, though, he was also jealous of her relationship with her father. Jay’s relationship with his father had been so unpleasant that he had joined the U.S. Marine Corps as soon as he turned eighteen and could sign up for the armed services without his parent’s consent. He wanted to get away from the man who had abused him and his sister for as long as he could remember. Alice’s relationship with her father, Ben Jones, though, was one every little girl desires to have with her paternal parent.
A German shepherd was hiding from the coming rain underneath the vehicle parked next to his, or so Jay thought. The dog extended his paw as the detective walked by, snapping Jay out of his funk. Jay wasn't a member of the K-9 unit where he worked, but he was fond of dogs, especially German shepherds. However, his experience with the breed had been limited to the stray German shepherd mixed breed dog that had wandered up to his parents’ ranch one sunny Spring day.
If Jay had been more familiar with the breed and the way they communicated, he may have sensed that the dog was trying to warn him of impending doom. German shepherds that aren’t trained to tolerate guns being fired are extremely sensitive to loud noises. His sensitive nose also knew the difference between a live body and a dead one, and he didn’t like what he had smelled earlier in the day.
The dog reminded Jay of his boyhood companion, so he shook the dog’s front paw. The dog laid his ears flat on his head as Jay patted his head, as if to warn the detective that something was amiss. Jay misread the dog’s mannerisms for a warning about the inclement weather that was predicted for later that day. The detective was distracted, because he felt as if a part of him had died. He hadn’t a clue that his life was in danger, too.
***
As he cleaned his hand with the hand sanitizer in his jacket pocket, Jay reached for the door with a sense of dread. He knew he needed to attend the funeral of his first wife for the sake of his children, but he still didn’t want to believe that the woman who had been his most trusted confidant at one time lay dead in a coffin.
As Jay walked into the parlor of the funeral home where the body of his first wife was displayed for viewing, he felt a sense of both relief and remorse. He decided to seek out his and Alice’s offspring. As he found their eldest children standing together, he struck up a conversation with his oldest child. That was relatively easy to do, and it made him temporarily forget the pain he was feeling. Seeing his first wife’s body lying in a coffin reminded him of the corpse that started their relationship. The story behind that corpse could have ended his, a close friend’s, and Alice’s lives prematurely. Jay didn’t know that the story behind the corpse still threatened his life.
Alicia knew the circumstances that led to her mother’s death, but she was too young to know the story of how her parents met. Jay slyly mentioned that the two had met when Alice was a teenager, and he thought it inappropriate to try to have a relationship with someone so young.
“Come on, Dad, you know what I mean. I’m your oldest child, and I understand my existence has something to do with the two of you getting married. You always say that Mom was your favorite ex-wife.” Alicia paused to wipe a tear from her eyes. She and her mother had been close all of her life, and it hurt her deeply to see Alice lying in a coffin.
“So please tell me the whole story of how the two of you met and fell in love. You often say she was your first real love. So, Dad, if you loved Mom so much, please tell me the story of how y’all met. And don’t skimp on the details. I already know Mom’s version of the story. Now, I want to hear your version of it.”
Magruder shook his head and started to walk away. The memory of his relationship with his first wife was painful, but his first child insisted on knowing the whole story.
“What’s the matter Dad?” Alicia chided, “Are you ‘all hat and no cattle’? We all know how Mom died. I want to know how she lived!”
Jay drew in a long breath as he thought about how to begin. The gauntlet had been thrown down, and he didn’t want to disappoint his firstborn child, despite the pain that rehashing the story of his and Alice’s romance would cause him. He also wanted to avoid putting his daughter’s life in danger, as his and her mother’s had been by knowing the story she was asking him to tell.
Jay thought for a moment, and decided that knowing the whole story would no longer be a detriment to his daughter; so he began the story of how he and his first wife met. “Well, your mom was still in nursing school when we started dating. Actually, her being in nursing school is how we began dating. It all started with a mysterious corpse in the Harris County Morgue….”
***
In the distance, the small man pointed his .223 caliber sniper rifle in the direction of the funeral home, hoping to catch a glimpse of the detective’s lips. He was an expert at doing this, but he was too far away to read the detective’s accurately, despite his incredible eyesight.
It was sometimes advantageous to be only five-foot-two and weigh only one-hundred twenty pounds, because he could easily hide behind a trash dumpster and not be seen. The small man had been trained to be an expert marksman with a rifle due to his former job description, but he was too far away to make an accurate shot. Being this far away was instrumental in making the small man inconspicuous, but it also prevented him from making his shot and reading the detective’s lips, even through his powerful scope.
As Taylor trained his scope on the detective’s upper torso, he confirmed his suspicion that Magruder was armed with a handgun, as cops are obligated to be at all times. The lump in the left side of Magruder’s jacket was obviously his ever-present nine-millimeter pistol. He could also tell that the detective was wearing a Kevlar vest. That’s why he had chosen the high caliber rifle with a small but powerful bullet. Taylor believed his choice of a sniper rifle resembled his physical description: small but powerful.
The rifle’s bullet would penetrate Kevlar, but he was too far away to shoot accurately. At three hundred meters, he was a good one-hundred meters out of the rifle’s accurate range, and drawing attention to himself unnecessarily would be detrimental to his plan. He needed the detective alive, anyway, to find the man who was his real target. Then, the detective and his whole family would be expendable.
The small man turned his cell phone on and accessed the funeral home’s main parlor, where he had been able to plant a listening device when he “persuaded” a telephone repairman to change clothes and places with him. Being proficient with repair equipment was advantageous, he knew. That’s why he had studied the manual for telephone repair men until he could recite every line of it from his eidetic memory.
PROLEGOMENON
Jay Magruder put his dumbbell down and looked at his bag phone in disbelief. He wanted to keep his athletic body in tip top shape, even after working twelve-hour shifts for twenty straight days. Why was his good friend from his hometown calling him on his only day off? What could possibly be so important as to disturb him during his only sabbatical from work in almost three weeks? What his friend had to say, though, disturbed Magruder more than the timing of the call.
***
In 1999, a bag phone would seem to be out of date. Most people disdained the bulky, battery-operated mobile phones when lighter, more portable cell phones came into vogue. Still, third-grade detective James David Magruder was glad to have a way to communicate with those not in his immediate vicinity. Even after a promotion from the plain-clothes police division to detective third-class; the young cop couldn’t afford anything more than the bag phone his department supplied him with. That’s the impression he gave his friends and coworkers.
However, there was another reason why the detective chose this mode of communication: his provider wouldn’t let him keep the same number if he switched types of mobile phones. Magruder kept the bag phone with him at all times. Only he knew the reason why he did this, because he wouldn’t share it with anyone else. A landline was out of the question, though.
If he installed a landline in his Spartanly decorated apartment, it would make him more easily located. That could lead to his ultimate and painful demise if the wrong people were able to find him. He wouldn’t be protected by his well-armed coworkers if he wasn’t working. It might also be detrimental to a young friend, one Jay felt wasn’t deserving of such a fate. After he moved across the sprawling metropolis of Houston, Texas, Magruder felt more confident that he wouldn’t be found because he’d made it harder to do so by those who meant to harm him and his young friend.
Magruder listened carefully to what his friend at the Harris County Morgue had to say. As he hung up his bag phone, he knew what he must do. He felt that he had no choice but to protect the truth about how the Houston Police Department’s most recent murder victim had died. So, Magruder put his nine-millimeter pistol in its holster and strapped it to his shoulder. After covering the handgun with a sports jacket, he drove his recently restored classic ‘64 and one-half Mustang to the Harris County Morgue. It was the only way he knew to protect the disturbing truth.
***
Jay was oblivious to the fact that he was conspicuous because his classic muscle car made him easy to follow. He didn’t notice the ancient green and gray step side pickup that was following him at a distance because his mind was on other things. The stalker knew better, though, than to get close enough to the detective that he could use his handgun. Jay Magruder was an expert marksman with a handgun and a rifle, according to the information the small man had been able to gather from one of Jay’s coworkers: Jay’s proficiency with a rifle and handgun, his usual haunts, and his most obvious perceived weaknesses, as well as the people he held closest.
Jay’s coworker had been “influenced” to share the information the same way the telephone repairman had been influenced to change clothes with the small man. Murdering a cop, though, may have led to an investigation, so Taylor let the man go with a warning that he knew the cop’s, his wife’s, and his daughter’s daily routine. He recited the information accurately from memory to the cop, letting him know that Taylor knew exactly where his whole family would be at any given time. If the cop breathed a word of this to anyone, his whole family may mysteriously disappear, Taylor warned. The cop knew better than to cross a government official with hardened criminals in place to do his bidding, as well as legitimate law enforcement officials who were too scared not to comply with the small man’s orders.
C.: Well, this looks interesting, but this Taylor guy is giving me the creeps. I need to start getting ready for work now, so I’ll read the rest of it tomorrow.