Fiction
It Never Starts With A Body Conclusion
A Sunny Alexander-Johnson and Henry James Series By P.G. & Sharon Barnett
My name is Sunny Alexander-Johnson, and I’m Henry James, and we’re writers for Dark Sides of the Truth magazine.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9
It took some major convincing to finally get detective Charlie Alvarez to admit one of his department’s forensic technicians might have missed something. He reluctantly agreed to contact us if they discovered anything. Although we guessed the odds of our suspicions panning out were pretty bleak, it was all we had going for us on this story.
This one has been a weird one for us. Not that we hadn’t done weird before. To hear everyone else tell it, we were the homecoming king and queen of weird. A lot of our stories had started out with some pretty wild characters. But they’d all been dead characters who, for some strange reason, seemed to believe we were the perfect targets of their ghostly attention.
But this character wasn’t a ghost. It was the body of Richard Carlson lying on the floor of an abandoned warehouse.
“Hey princess, you want to grab some lunch?”
“Not Johnson’s.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Fine, not Johnsons. How about that Thai place over on Williams street?”
“Perfect, I’ll even drive.”
We decided to make it a leisurely lunch, purposely steering clear of offering any ruminations about the current story. We’d been doing this long enough to know that posturing any new ideas at this stage of the game usually produced nothing but speculative fiction.
“I’ll pick up the tab, princess.”
“Why Henry James how gracious of you. You know it’s your damned turn anyway, right?”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t pick up on that.”
“Look. Go take care of the bill. I need to go to the ladies’ room.”
The call came from detective Alvarez the very minute we parted company.
“This is James. Hey, Charlie, whatcha got for us? You did? What in the hell happened? Okay, let me get this straight. He dusted the front, checked the box, and then got called away before he could dust the back? He did? Both quality prints? Ah man, you just made our day. How long before we know something?”
“How long before we know something what?”
“They found some prints, girl.”
“See, I told you, Henry. There’s our improbable.”
“Hang on, princess. What’s that, Charlie? Cool, call me back if you get something back from AFIS. Damned fine work, Charlie. Yeah, me too. Talk to you later.”
You know the old saying about a watched pot never boiling? We have decided to add to that. It seems as if the same applies to staring at a cell phone waiting for it to ring. When it did what Charlie told us completely floored us.
“That’s just not possible, Henry. I’ve known that man my entire life. He’s even the Godfather of Ray and Demarcus. It just can’t be. There’s got to be some mistake. Call Charlie and tell him to rerun the prints. This is wrong. It’s…”
“Shaundrika, I’m guessing we’ll get the same results. Last night Cynthia mentioned something about a going-away party for him this Friday. Said something about his retirement, and he collecting his fat pension and his wife and he traveling the world now that his boys are out of the house.
“Let me guess. Twins?”
“Yeap.”
“Ah, Jesus Christ Henry, this is going to kill mother.”
“You let me take care of that. I have a plan.”
“Oh Lord, here we go.”
Friday morning, we made ourselves comfortable in the executive board room at Alexander Investments and sat patiently as board members trickled in and took their seats. Although it was quite unusual for us to be there, most of the board members knew us, offering greetings or coming over to say hello. As the last executive made her way in, Cynthia saw to it the doors were closed and returned to where we were sitting.
“Okay, everyone, settle down. We have a lot to cover today, and I know we’re all pressed for time. Now, the first topic I’d like to cover is something I’m sure none of you know. It seems as though after all these years someone has decided it’s finally time to retire. After years of hard work and dedication to Alexander Investments, this person has built up quite a nest egg with his pension and personal investments. I would imagine it would take him the rest of his life to spend it all. With that in mind, we couldn’t just let him go without calling him out. When I told Shaundrika and Henry, they took the time to prepare a little going away montage for this man. Henry? Shaundrika?”
After inserting a thumb drive into a computer atop a podium sitting beside a large display, we kicked off our presentation. Our opening slide was a large photo of Richard Carlson.
“Some of you may not know this man, but his name is Richard Carlson. He was an Army buddy of Raymond Alexander Sr. Everybody knows who that is, right?”
There was a ripple of laughter from a few people. One board member in particular didn’t seem amused. In fact, he continued to stare at the screen as if he’d seen something he wasn’t expecting to see.
“Next slide Sunny.”
“Okay, so this what happened to Richard. Evidently, he killed himself, right? Next slide.”
“Only he didn’t. See the watch on his arm? Notice the stem. It’s pointing toward Richard’s elbow, which means Richard was a really odd fellow or someone put that watch there. Someone who killed Richard. The same someone who smashed the window of Richard’s car to retrieve information Richard had which would have incriminated him.”
“Cynthia, what the hell is this? We don’t have time for this.”
“Oh, but we do Hubert. Please, Henry, continue.”
“Thanks, dear. So, what the killer didn’t know was the statute of limitations for embezzlement had run out long ago. So even if he’d allowed Richard to come forth with the information proving the killer was the true embezzler and that he’d framed Richard to take the fall, he couldn’t be tried for it. But the killer didn’t want to take a chance on getting fired from Alexander Investments before he could cash out. So he killed Richard, then staged the scene to make it look like a suicide. That about sum it, Hubert?”
“How in the hell would I know Henry.? I wasn’t there.”
“Oh, but you were Hubert. Remember the watch? The watch you took off Richard’s wrist? Well, it was freezing that night, Hubert. And you realized you couldn’t get the watch off without removing one of your gloves. But you were careful to wipe it off, weren’t you? Except you already had it on Richard’s wrist before you wiped it clean. Which meant two fingerprints on the bottom of the watch were still there. Two fingerprints which belong to you, Hubert.”
“That’s preposterous. I’ve never so much as had a parking ticket. There’s no way my fingerprints…”
It was suddenly so quiet you could almost hear the sweatdrops forming on Hubert’s face as they fell against the arms of his chair.
“It just hit you, didn’t it Hubert? You were going to say you’ve never been fingerprinted, right? But you have haven’t you Hubert? You have a license to carry for all those nifty guns you build. In Texas, fingerprinting is required, and those fingerprints are in AFIS where we found a match.”
Hubert Schwimmer stood and started for the door, but stopped only long enough to reach into his coat pocket and retrieve a ringing phone and gaze at it.
“Oh, that’s probably you’re wife Betty calling to ask you why police officers are swarming the place with search warrants. You may want to get that. It may be the last time you get to speak with her for a long time.”
Hubert yanked one of the board room’s doors open and collided with detective Charlie Alvarez who immediately spun him around, cuffed him, and began to cite the Miranda.
We stood watching as Charlie led Hubert away in manacles. Then we turned to face Cynthia.
“So how’d we do?”
“Probably one of the most impressive presentations we’ve seen in Alexander Investments well, like in forever. Shaundrika? Why don’t you, Robert and the twins come over to the house tonight? I believe this calls for a celebration.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. You ready to roll old man?”
“I was born ready, my Nubian princess.”
“Mother, does he talk like this to you?”
“Only during sex, dear.”
“EEEEWWWW.”
Thank you so much for reading. You didn’t have to, but I’m certainly glad you did.
Let’s keep in touch: [email protected]
© P.G. Barnett, 2020. All Rights Reserved.