Post Mortem Murder

On the one year anniversary of Larry Milford’s execution, I received the letter. Two days after reading it, I turned in my badge and gun, no explanation given.

Returning to the precinct at the end of my shift, not feeling any particular way, I found Juliet McBride, senior partner of McBride, Williams, and Clark, Attorneys at Law, seated on a bench and waiting for me, a stuffed manilla envelope lying across her lap.

J.J., manning the front desk, leaned forward when he saw me walk in and said, “You’ve got a visitor,” pointing out the smartly-dressed woman just across the aisle.

“Miss?” he called out to her, his voice loud enough to be heard over the din of people milling around. “Detective Norman,” he stated, pointing at me.

The woman’s smile appeared as our eyes met. She stood and ran her hands down her skirt to smooth any ruffles before approaching, the crinkling of the envelope clutched in her hand grabbing my attention as I watched her.

“Detective Norman? I’m Juliet McBride,” she commented by way of introduction as she handed me her business card.

Lacking any further context, I read the card in my hand to clarify her identity. “And what can I do for you, Ms. McBride?” I asked. To be honest, I’m not terribly fond of attorneys. They seem to think we’re their underlings, the grunt workers whose sole function is to bring a suspect into court so that they can do their magic as they argue against the district attorneys. Years of experience have formed my prejudice.

“Mr. Vincenzo asked me to give this to you,” she said, her smile still wide, as she brought her hand up to pass me the envelope.

The mention of his name startled me. Francis Vincenzo, a man so popular his nickname on the street was St. Francis, had been dead for over seven years. A philanthropist whose quiet, generous donations to various charities went unnoticed by the public at large, his name rose to prominence when he founded six Ladies Shelters for Abused Women in and around the city. What’s more, he made weekly trips to all six and saw to it that many of the women were given a chance to start anew with small, private donations from his charitable trust. If ever a man didn’t deserve to be murdered, Francis Vincenzo was it. And yet, he was.

“Can’t imagine it took you seven years to find me,” I remarked, trying—but ultimately failing—to hide the snide in my tone.

Juliet tittered in what came off like a practiced we’re on the same team response. “No, no,” she replied, “but Mr. Vincenzo’s instructions were clear and explicit.”

After having to side-step to avoid being bumped into by a beat cop on his way out the door who was more focused on the screen of his cell phone than the people around him, I said, “Come. Let’s go to my desk and out of the main hall.”

She nodded her agreement.

As we walked upstairs to the detective division, I asked, “Instructions? What instructions did he leave?”

“Today’s the one-year anniversary of Larry Milford’s execution.”

I hadn’t remembered, not the exact date, anyway. His was the only capital punishment case I’d ever worked on, and my personal feelings about the death penalty had been screaming in my head while sitting in the courtroom during the pronouncement of his sentence. The fight to hold back the tears when I’d heard “…where you shall be put to death by means of lethal injection,” weren’t playing out as a philosophic argument about whether a society has the right to take someone’s life; I was responsible for gathering the evidence that sealed his fate, instrumental in building the case against him. Me.

The guilt I carried with me was long-lasting, brought back to the surface every time Larry Milford went through another rung in his appeals process. And every time, it all boiled down to Milford proclaiming his innocence. Even his last words, strapped to the table were reported to have been, “I will die tonight even though I didn’t do anything to warrant it.”

Absent that night even though I had been invited to be there, I read on my news feed the following morning how he trembled in fear as they led him into the chamber, tears streaming down his cheeks. I saw the image in my mind’s eye of his knees buckling when he saw the gurney—as reported in the same article—and what his last words were.

A few more minutes of conversation with Juliet and she left, saying that we’d lost one of the good ones when Mr. Vincenzo had died. I nodded, wondering if anyone in the world would disagree with that assertion. So, after clocking out, I took the envelope home and, dinner eaten, I stayed at the table and opened it up in the privacy of my dining room. I couldn’t imagine what a dead man’s letter might have to say and was curious to find out.

It’s redundant to ask if this letter is being read, so I’ll save the rhetoric and dive right in.

A week after she was discharged from the army, I met the woman who I eventually married. I loved my wife. I loved my wife more than the sight I lost five years ago and six years after our betrothal. I loved my wife more than life itself, as will soon enough become plainly evident. And yet, I cannot help but wonder if I was possessed of my sight, might I have been less attuned to the changes she underwent? Could she have duped me with brave, false cheer as she repeated that everything was okay, that nothing had changed? Loss of one sense tends to hone the others more sharply.

I suppose such questions will never find the light of day because I am as I am to face the obstacles of my life in the fashion God has seen fit. But I shall keep God to a minimum as I move forward with my confession.

My story begins seven years prior to my writing of this letter. When you read it, the time elapsed is beyond my ability to figure out, for I am dead. Not as I write it—don’t be absurd—but its receipt is in God’s hands. Perhaps no one is reading this letter at all, and this effort is for naught, save to work as my last confession and my weak attempt at absolution. If that be the case, it will have to suffice.

We were happy, my wife and I, for our first thirteen years of marriage. We spoke of tomorrows with certainty—more fool us. And yet, even the tragic accident that cost me my sight didn’t mar the euphoria each of us lived while in the company of the other. For her part, she took the added responsibility inherent in being the partner of a blind man with grace, never once losing her patience, never once making me feel a burden. For mine, I was determined, in vigorous action, to maintain my independence despite my new-found, sightless reality. I am, of a nature, a determined individual, and it is this trait that has afforded me many successes as regards my financial well-being.

I wish I could recall with probity the specific date when the undercurrent of intimacy—both of that tenuous social tether between two connected souls as well as the physical one inherent in marriage—changed, but I can’t. Nevertheless, the suspicion that some traumatic experience had befallen my wife grew pregnant in my thoughts for some months until—with water breaking—it birthed into certainty. Try though I might to penetrate the reason for this change in as unobtrusive a manner as I could muster, she remained taciturn, turning any inquiry of this new intruder into an accusation of paranoia on my behalf.

The happiness fell away; the love-inspired confidentiality that was the foundation of our time together crumbled. After a time, I came to the conclusion that if she had to face whatever demons were now affixed to her reality alone, then I would have to dutifully allow her her secret. To add any burden, real or imagined, to her already unsteady and closeted version of reality would be to further accelerate our decline. It was criminal.

It was only after her death, two years ago now at the time of this writing, that I learned the source of her quiet misery came from her brutal rape at the hands of an acquaintance, a man of quiet reserve who was once stationed where she had been when she’d served in the military, one Larry Milford.

Armed with this information—a long-winded, hunt and peck series of discoveries too numerous to detail here—I surreptitiously arranged a same time/same place meeting, pretending coincidence and using Cheryl, my wife’s closest friend who had also served in her unit as our link, our mutual connection.

It was during the early stages of my newfound “friend” that I opened up the first shelter for abused women. What was seen as a philanthropic act was, in truth, a selfish endeavor, but I needed to identify the feelings rape victims experienced while in the midst of that violation. What I learned was the most common thread between ALL of them was a feeling of helplessness, both during and after the act. It echoes, and sometimes relentlessly.

I wanted, no matter the cost, to have Larry Milford undergo that same sense of helplessness he’d perpetrated—the one my beloved suffered the last years of her life. There was no limit to my hatred of this man even as I, playacting, kept constant tabs of him by bringing him into and up the ranks of my business. Many was the night we’d go out and share a few drinks after work, the burning of the alcohol as it slid down my throat a constant reminder of my caustic rage.

I learned of his life. Of his affinity for weaponry, his fascination with poison dart frogs. A strange hobby, to be sure, one that arrived with startling surprise, but its existence forged a plan in my head that I was determined to see through. You see, I had come to realize that the indignity women who have been raped suffer has no equivalent in the life of a man. I learned the anger, to varying degrees, toward themselves and the world in which they live never rests for the sole reason that they have no place to park it. And, worst of all, I condemn myself for all the petty tiffs I made my wife endure in the hopes of getting her to ‘open up’ about the change she underwent. As if my knowledge of its cause superseded her unwillingness to speak of it. Much like the rage of these rape victims, I have had no place to park my guilt.

But I digress. As I sat one evening at my house, the television was playing a western where a man was heading to the gallows, unable to escape his fate. His anguished proclamations of innocence went unheeded, his repeated, ever-intensifying screams of, “No… no… NO!” falling on deaf ears. As I listened, the visuals playing out in my head, I knew I’d found the answer, the singular condition where a man might face the same feeling of helplessness and despair that had been repeated to me any number of times by the women of the shelter.

Larry Milford had to die, but more, he needed to die in an anguished manner— possibly at the hand of the government—unable to extricate himself from his fate. And so I devised a plan, one that would result in my death. But more importantly, one that would point fingers at Larry even though my death was suicide dressed to look like murder.

I imagine it took forensic labs some time to connect the poison I ingested with poison dart frogs—their toxins are low on the list of probable causes of death. But that, if I’m allowed a small bit of vainglory, was my masterstroke! That I’d included him in my will as recipient of a not-insubstantial amount of money, I suspect, was the first step in your investigation, one I crafted with care. And, as you know, the deliberate and rather public row I had with him just two days ago with press present, was another.

I needn’t go on; for you, it’s just a repetition of history. For me, it’s a plan that I hope will bring the desired effect. The very fact that you’re reading this tells me I succeeded, and that is sufficient.

Tomorrow, I am going to go to my attorneys, envelope in hand, with specific instructions regarding its release. I’m sorry; I do not know your name. But whoever you are, know that you have done humanity a great service. As for me, my life on this Earth shall soon come to an end but that is not to be mourned. I have done what I have to do, and so have you.

In a sense, I have made you an accomplice and for that I hope you can forgive me. But it was for a noble cause, if that offers some level of consolation. No, Larry Milford is NOT responsible for my murder, but he IS responsible for a far more heinous crime than that: he killed my happiness, and for that, losing his life is insufficient punishment. It is the fear, the impotence, and the unwillingness to accept his fate I seek. He will die in full view of the ramifications of his putrid life with no hope for redemption.

With Highest Regard,

Francis Vincenzo