SIREN: A Norelle Phillips Mystery

CHAPTER 1

The two of them walked slowly down the moss-covered slope leading to the park. Silence had been their chaperone since they left the noisy, crowded, smoke-filled bar. The girl gave him a smile that implied something good, better than what awaited him back at the bar with his friends. He returned the look with an impish grin, his face flushed with excitement. It would be worth it.

She grabbed his hand and tugged him forward. They stood at the park entrance and looked around. He scanned the park, lit by a single pole above the tennis courts a hundred yards away. The black sky towered above, empty of any stars.

The girl dropped his hand and sprinted away, quickly leaving him behind. Hey, get back here! He playfully ran after her for a few paces, but gave up.

He looked around the empty, dark park, uneasy and yet excited. He leaned his head back and took a long pull at his beer, then stared for a long while at the sky that glared at him like a disapproving mother. His own mother would be pissed if she knew what he was up to right now. He threw the beer at the sky and took off after her.

The girl ran across the park with the swift grace of an exotic animal. Her hair was long and dark with masses of curls suspended in air, and her milk-white skin exaggerated the darkness. He was in awe of the picture painted before him: a mystical beauty in sync with the dark element.

He lost sight of her, relying on the noise of her feet ruffling leaves to guide him. The bushes moved as he came closer to the dark hole. He paused at the entrance to the forest, and squinted his eyes. He heard the noise of the water, and silence.

He turned around and faced the open park, then looked back at the forest, smiling. The thought that it was vacant and the mysterious beauty somewhere in it excited him.

I’m coming to get you, he said, and slowly went into the woods. He walked lightly, a predator stalking its prey.

Water gushed from a metal tunnel encased in large boulders, pouring foam into the brook that separated him from the other side. The boy stood there puzzled, calculating how he would get to her. The mystic beauty was nowhere in sight, as though she had vanished from his erotic mirage. He dug into his pocket and removed a piece of foil. With a pinky finger, he dipped into the contents, placed it in his left nostril and inhaled deeply. He carefully folded the foil packet and stuffed it in his shirt, then staggered into the water. The cold jolted him and rose up to his knees. Determined to get across it, he pushed, using his muscular legs and strong hips. How did that bitch get across? he said, the water now up to his mid-thighs.

Where the fuck are you! He climbed up, his chest heaving, desperate for air. He flopped down on the moist grass to catch his breath. Was a bang worth all this? He would pop her good, then get back to the bar with his pals.

He opened the foil packet again and sniffed hard. The white powder dripped down his throat, causing him to cough violently for a few seconds. Okay! Enough of this shit, he said. If you don’t show your face, I’m outta here! He got up and brushed off his wet Bermuda shorts, and wrung out the shirttail.

She emerged nude and held her white breasts, massaging them. Her gray eyes enticed him, her pale body a contrast to the darkness on her head and beneath her stomach.

She spread her legs apart, showing him, inviting him with one hand moving up and down.

His eyes locked on her, he peeled his clothes as quickly as he could, starving for her beauty and firm flesh. She stepped up to him slowly and paused—the chase was more fun than the catch—and stood an inch before him, smiling. She allowed him to extend his hand to touch her breast, then withdrew and ran away, giggling.

The startled boy jumped back and fell backwards into the brook.

Goddammit! He hoisted himself out of the water and collided with an unseen rock. Fuck! He hopped about holding his big toe. Come out here now!

No, you come here, she said.

Fuck you! He lay down and looked up at the sky. He would use a ruse of disinterest to lure her back. He was not leaving until he got what he came down here for. Fuckin’ cunt. She was watching him, he knew that much, and waited. The stones were embedded in his buttocks and back but he was determined to remain still.

She appeared from the blackness and looked down at him, smiling. He quickly grabbed her leg. She lost her balance and fell, giving him the chance to pounce on her.

He thrust hard. The girl ground her teeth and the inviting smile melted. His face became evil; he gained pleasure from her pain and pushed harder. The girl squirmed in a panic.

Stay still! He gripped her wrists and pinned her arms over her head, ignoring her cries and her tears.

Each thrust was a payback: for the chase, for the water, for his toe, for being a tease, for the fight with the redneck over a cheap cunt like her!

He straddled his knees around her fragile neck and forced her to take him in. She whimpered like a terrified pup betrayed by its owner. The fear had etched deep, furrowed lines on her forehead; tears rolled off to the side of her face.

Shut up, bitch!

He rolled over, relieved and vindicated. His heavy breathing was the only noise heard within miles of the black forest.

The girl didn’t move for a few moments. She looked at him from a side glance, then jumped up quickly and ran away.

Dumb bitch. He rested his head in his hands and laughed.

He heard the bushes move, her footsteps fade away. The boy reached for his shirt to check it—three packets left. He then reopened one and inhaled again. The shit wasn’t potent. Goddamn nigger dealer. Next time he’d cop from the spic; the quality was better.

The boy sat up. The bar, his friends, shit. He looked around for his clothes.

A low whisper pierced the bushes. The sound was barely audible, but enough to capture his attention. His eyes shifted left to right, looking for the location of the voice. He heard it again and spun around. Nothing. An uneasiness gripped his insides, he felt the hairs on his arm bristle.

You still here? The boy strained to hear something, anything. A strong curiosity made him move closer to the bushes, against his judgment, which said get dressed and get the hell out of there.

He felt a powerful thump against his chest. It pushed him back away from the bushes. It hit him again. He fell backwards and slammed into a stone.

He tried to get up, away from what had hit him, and rolled from side to side, desperate to avoid the sharp pain, the stinging sensation he felt all over.

He managed to get on his knees before he was hit from behind. He jerked back and turned. Nothing. He felt the back of his neck. Warm and watery. Shit!

It hit him again. He tried to get up but fell. A punch landed between his shoulders, deep. He felt the skin separating from the muscle. He shielded his face with his hands and screamed at the heavens to stop slicing him.

He was answered with a force that pushed him against the moist grass. Again, he tried to get up, but it knocked him down. Fear drained the blood out of his face. The leaves shuffled closer to him. Help me! God! Please!

Another punch and another. He crawled in circles like a dog chasing its tail. Jesus, help me! I’m dying! His blood followed him everywhere he went, in circles of various shapes and sizes.

He was weak, his body drained of life. He curled up in a fetal position, and rambled a prayer as the impact hit him again and again, bloodying his white face.

He lay naked as the day he came into the world, surrounded, drowning in a pool of his blood, dying. The leaves moved around him, dancing.

CHAPTER 2

The blinding rays of Sunday morning prompted Norelle to aim the remote at the television and flick it off. Her body ached, courtesy of the Flo-Jo workout. She concluded she’d never have a body like Florence Griffith-Joyner no matter how much weight she lost, and how much she exercised; it ain’t gonna happen.

She lay exhausted on the Stainmaster carpet, mouth open, nicotine lungs gasping for air. She closed her eyes to rest for a second, ignoring the beads of sweat that formed a trail from her forehead to the tip of her nose. Maybe power walking was more suited, a less tortuous form of exercise. She had been through every aerobic tape produced: Afrocentric (too fast), Workout with the Oldies (too slow), and Aerobics to the Classics (too dead).

She rolled over and stared at the ceiling. Needed plaster. She’d get Mark to do it when he had the time.

Walking would be better. She could get out the Walkman and do laps around the football field at the old Nyack High School. Besides, she knocked off forty pounds without those damn videos, the last ten shouldn’t be a problem.

Norelle sat up and looked at her reflection in the television. She reached for the towel and dabbed the perspiration off, stopping at the slight sag under her chin. She tapped it with her hand; it sounded like meat being tenderized. Loose flesh due to weight loss. She leaned into the television and inspected her chin closely. It wasn’t too visible but it was there. With both hands she tapped at it again, and frowned. She placed her hands at the side of her smooth coffee-brown face; no sagging here. She smiled. Now back at that damn loose chin. With a little facial exercise, it’d be gone in no time. Main thing was the love handles and that big old butt were gone—well, most of it, anyway.

God, had it really been twenty years since she’d been in this kind of shape? Funny how weight finally came off when she’d announced she was retiring from the force in a few months.

Twenty years? Sure didn’t feel like it. So much had happened. Divorce, and all the loneliness that came with it. Middle age, the stress of her job, and two kids who were now adults with lives of their own. Now everything was slowly dissolving—except these last ten pounds.

What to do with all that soon-to-be-free time? College? Nah! Got the Bachelor’s in criminal science a decade ago. Besides, Norelle knew full well that she’d have little patience being a student again. Even now, she was too hyper to sit in one place, any place, for a long time, much less with students half her age. And what if she felt an instructor was incompetent? All bets were off. There was no telling what she would do.

Teaching? Probably not. You couldn’t learn in a classroom what Norelle had to offer. Besides, school bureaucrats would never stand for her unconventional teaching methods. You learn by hands-on approach, the way a surgeon or a great chef learns. Those clowns in the school administration were strictly by the book.

Travel? Maybe. With whom, Big Mell? No way. Her mother would drive her crazy with her eccentric personality. A vacation with Big Mell would be work. Tiresome work for a sluggish Norelle.

Norelle massaged her cheeks, thinking hard. What to do, what to do…

What to do. It tugged at her, nagged her like a throb without the pain. What was really bothering her, the real reason for her fear of retirement?

Work took away guilt, depression, anything that required too much thought. Those sneaky feelings lay dormant during an investigation, but greeted her when she returned home to an empty house. The house without a lover, or children, not even a dog to wag its tail and greet her. At this point, Norelle would settle for just a human to talk to.

She spent too many nights alone, listening to WBLS’s Quiet Storm, an hour or two of easy listening jazz and love songs, depression music to send a lovesick fool over to the nearest stove to stick a head into.

Or in front of the television, sandwich in hand, watching CNN until she fell asleep. She’d wake up drowsy, shut the television off, then trudge up the stairs to bed, only to lie awake for hours.

Norelle took a deep, introspective sigh. Stop thinking. It ain’t easy to turn off when you’re on twenty-four hours a day!

A sinking feeling started in her throat and landed smack in the middle of her gut. Admit it, you hate being alone: with yourself, with your thoughts. Ain’t no one around to irritate and piss off.

Feeling guilty, she hit the remote button and resumed a flat-back position. She reached for a cigarette, fired it up and placed her head firmly on the carpet, eyes on the television. Look at her. Norelle Phillips watched Flo-Jo’s taut, firm body moving with seemingly minimal ease. God, all that and the stamina of a twenty-year-old.

Norelle instinctively sat up when she heard the car pull into the driveway. She stomped out the cigarette and turned the volume up.

Kim bounced in, keys dangling, arms full of bagels and the Sunday paper. Norelle lifted her legs in a fervor of panting and huffing. She felt Kim eyeing her suspiciously from the kitchen.

One, two, three, four…

Ma.

Not now, she said between puffs. One, two, three…

Norelle heard the bag rattle and shot a glance toward the kitchen. Kim removed a bagel from the bag, her favorite: cinnamon with raisins.

Come on, Ma, you know you want it…

One sec! Norelle finished the fourth set of leg lifts.

Kim walked over and dangled the bagel in front of her. She surrendered like a hungry dog, stuffed the bagel in her mouth and fell back savoring the warm dough and raisins with a moan. Needs butter.

Kim laughed. Norelle chewed the bagel slowly and smirked at her.

How do you expect to lose the killer ten if you don’t exercise? Kim folded her arms.

Norelle continued to chew. Kim reached over her and picked up the smoldering cigarette. This does not belong in a workout.

She carried the ashtray into the kitchen and continued to lecture. Ma, who said if she had a VCR she’d be able to do the exercise to tone and firm up? Kim moved about the kitchen, prepping it for breakfast. Norelle mocked her lecturing her, then stopped when Kim turned around and waited for an answer. Who said she was going to quit smoking and get fit? And who uses the VCR, that was solely for exercising, to tape her favorite trash TV show?

Got me, Norelle said. Some fool making promises she knows she can’t keep.

This is the first time you’ve used that video, isn’t it? Norelle looked away and shrugged. I thought so. Mark told me that tape has gathered dust since Christmas, Kim said. You use the VCR to tape Oprah and Judge Judy.

Wait till I see your big-mouth brother. Norelle got up and went into the kitchen. She opened the fridge, took the orange juice out and drank it from the carton.

Ma!

What? I’m the only one who lives here now. Norelle took another gulp and put it back. Kim winced. You know, since you became a mother, you’re more of a pain in the ass than you were when you were a teenager.

A pain in the ass usually goes away.

Goodbye. Norelle headed for the stairs. I’m taking a shower. How about you make us some eggs when I’m done?

Upstairs in her bedroom, Norelle stripped off her exercise clothes and got in the hot shower. It was always a shock to see Kim so grown up. She was no longer the little girl with the color-beaded braids and the missing front tooth. No longer the smart-ass teenager glued to the phone. She was sophisticated now, very much an adult, more so than when Norelle was her age.

How did she grow up so fast? Norelle shampooed her head in deep thought. She had tried to get to know her daughter in stages: from birth to child to teenager to womanhood. There were pictures, old 16mm films and Big Mell’s photographic memory that jogged her memory. But what happened in that space between infant to adulthood? The daily chores of living made Norelle forget her daughter’s, her children’s childhood.

But she had the sincerest intentions. Norelle wanted to give her children a childhood they would recall fondly. She wanted to be as good a mother as Big Mell, even better. Big Mell had succeeded: she had a career, a family, a house to run, and had time to be active in the church, and in the community. Why couldn’t Norelle do the same with less?

Funnel vision. The placement of all eggs in one basket. Perhaps, Norelle cringed, the wrong basket. She failed, she could not balance the scale and do a good job. Being a woman on the police force in the early seventies was more than difficult. It was pure hell and Norelle had to give more than one hundred percent. Two hundred: one hundred for being a minority, the other, which she suspected was worse, for being a woman. It was difficult, no way could she chase criminals and attend a softball game or recital at the same time.

The overwhelming difference was support. Big Mell had her husband, but Norelle’s Mark was a persona non grata. Mark—or Big Mark as he was called—was to blame as well.

It didn’t seem to bother Big Mark that Norelle’s parents became parents again. That it was her father at the softball games, or on a fishing trip with their son. Her parents picked up the pieces and made a family again. They replaced what lacked in the Phillips family and it made Norelle feel all the worse. Norelle’s father was more of a father to their son than Big Mark could ever have been. Her son should have learned how to pitch a fast ball, or how to bait a hook, from Mark, not her father. That made her bitter.

His sorry excuses fell on deaf ears. He was helping himself to a slice of the America Dream.

I just need you to be patient, Norelle, he said. I’m building, renovating homes every month, I just hired two more guys. Business is damn good. Hell, within five years, I—we’ll be at a point in our lives to do whatever we want. We’ll get a bigger house, with a pool, send the kids to private school. He held her by the arms with a smile. Our dreams are just around the bend. He sat her down. Do you know how lucky you are to be with me?

Which is the point, we need you now.

He shot up and paced around the living room, exasperated. What about you! He spun around and faced her. You could do more. I make enough for all of us, more than enough, why do you have to work? At a police department for that matter!

It’s not just fucking work, Norelle shouted back. It’s my career.

Big Mark grinned at her condescendingly. Work? A career? he said. It’s dead-end, Norelle. You think those guys in blue gonna let someone like you last?

I can handle any bigot, you know that. Norelle was smoldering, but she kept her temper in check, knowing the children were asleep upstairs.

Big Mark rested his arm on the fireplace mantle. I know you can. But what about men who don’t want a woman, black or white, around them? You thought about that?

I’m not quitting the academy.

Then you quit your family, he said quietly. Why must you always be the first in line? Let some unmarried woman be the trailblazer. He