C.: Wow! d.c. worked his name into the body of the book, not at the beginning. That’s interesting. I can hardly wait to read chapter two of THE MAGRUDER MYSTERIES MURDER 8: THE INERT INGREDIENT.
Hmm. The second chapter’s name is part of the title. That’s also interesting.
CHAPTER TWO: THE INERT INGREDIENT
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 had been 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 parents’ consent. He wanted to get away from the man who had abused his sister and him for as long as he could remember. Conversely, Alice’s relationship with her father, Ben Jones, was one every little girl desires to have with her paternal parent.
A German shepherd was hiding from the coming rain beneath the vehicle parked next to his, or so Jay thought. The dog extended its paw as the detective walked by on his way to the funeral home, snapping Jay out of his funk. “You look like my best friend, Cain. He and I spent a lot of time together on my grandparents’ ranch when I was a boy. What's your name, big fella?” Jay asked the dog.
As Jay patted his new friend on the head, the dog laid its ears flat, 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.
Jay wasn't a member of the K-9 unit where he worked, but he was fond of dogs. If Jay had been more familiar with the breed that police forces use extensively and the way they communicated, he may have sensed that the dog was trying to warn him of impending doom. He wasn’t aware that German shepherds that aren’t trained as police dogs are extremely sensitive to loud noises and the putrid smell that a dead body makes; and it didn’t like what it had smelled earlier in the day.
***
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, Alicia. 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 had 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 had 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 the corner of one eye. She and her mother had been close all of her life, and it hurt her deeply to see Alice lying in a coffin. She thought that her dad telling her about her mother’s life may relieve some of the pain she was feeling.
“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’s scope 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 words accurately, despite his incredible eyesight.
It was sometimes helpful 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 smell emanating from the dumpster also discouraged others from approaching it, but it bothered Taylor little, if at all. He had a task to accomplish, and nothing would stand in his way, even the smell of rotting human flesh.
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 Taylor 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 technician to change clothes and places with him with his trusty trench knife. Being proficient with repair equipment was helpful, he knew. That’s why he had studied the manual for telephone technicians until he could recite every line of it from his eidetic memory.
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