Jenna Ryan: Mistletoe and Murder

© 2007

Warren Critch wanted to write more, but he knew the card would be inspected before it left the facility.

Federal prison, that’s where the judge had sent him. Twelve years inside for attempting to shoot a police officer. There’d been no mention as to why a high school chemistry teacher had been holding a gun on the officer in question and only a fleeting reference to the woman said officer had murdered.

Warren pictured his wife’s face in death. Sweet Belinda. How beautiful she’d looked, even with a bullet hole the size of a pigeon’s egg in her chest.

Oh, yes, they’d let him see her. Someone said there’d been mistletoe leaves scattered around her. The police had murmured the usual platitudes. They’d shuffled their cop feet and cleared their collective throats. But not one of them had made eye contact with him. Not in the morgue, not in his jail cell and certainly not in the courtroom.

Jacob Knight was one of their own; Warren Critch was not. As for Warren’s wife, well, just because Jacob had been involved with Belinda once, had lunch with her two days before she’d died and argued with her in public, that didn’t mean he’d killed her. Cops didn’t shoot innocent people. Warren was wrong to believe that. Someone else had put that hole in her chest.

His lips thinned. Did they take him for a complete fool? Jacob Knight had threatened Belinda twice. Then he’d done the deed.

Warren could have stopped him, would have if Officer Romana Grey hadn’t slipped into the alley and pressed her own gun to the base of his neck. She’d warned him to back off, and he had. Dammit, he had. Because of that, Belinda was dead.

Warren’s fingers shook as he shoved the festive card into a bright red envelope. Red for Christmas; red for blood- Belinda’s blood, the blood Jacob Knight had spilled one year ago this Christmas season. Knight had stolen Belinda’s life, then had his own returned to him courtesy of Romana Grey. They would go on being cops while he moldered in prison and Belinda rotted in a coffin.

No justice there, Warren reflected. But there would be, in time. He would see to that.

He would be good, so very, very good. The years would pass, and he would trade these bars for freedom. Christmas would come again and again. And at length two more people would die.

Romana Grey first, then Jacob Knight. By the time their bodies were discovered, he’d be in South America, sequestered in the Amazon jungle, where he’d spent a large portion of his youth. An eye for an eye, the missionaries on the big river would say. A fitting Christmas present, was Warren Critch’s more cynical judgment.

A grim smile flitted across his lips as he opened a second card. Time to offer Jacob the same Christmas wishes he’d bestowed upon Romana.

“Enjoy the holidays while you can,” he whispered to them from a distance. “You have only a handful left.”

“It’s the perfect scent for you.” The woman behind the department store perfume counter gave one of her test bottles a spritz. “Mysterious and exotic, with a hint of Eastern spice.”

Romana Grey sniffed her wrist. “It’s lovely, but I’m not shopping for me.”

A finger in her spine preceded a cheerful, “Note to self, Ro, as females, we’re always shopping for ‘me,’ even in December.” Romana’s cousin, Anna Fitzgerald, picked up another bottle and sprayed the already pungent air. “This smells expensive.”

“Ten dollars a pump,” the saleswoman confirmed, then excused herself to intercept a group of excited teenage girls.

Fitz set her forearms on the glass case. “So, who are you shopping for today? Mom, Grandma Grey or one of your six sisters-in-law?”

“Five. Noah’s divorced.” Romana gave her wrist a shake. “This really is nice.” Then she glanced at her watch. “Why are you here at three in the afternoon?”

“Some wires fried in the main lab. The forensics team’s been evacuated until morning.” Out of the corner of her eye, Romana saw Fitz finger a tiny bottle. “I was bagging a hair sample when I smelled the smoke. Well, actually, Doc Patrick smelled it. You know him-tall, sexy dude who never remembers to get a haircut and whose socks don’t match.”

Romana swatted her cousin’s wandering fingers. “Stop doing that.”

“I’m not going to steal it.”

“And I’m supposed to know that? It’s me, Fitz. I arrested you twice for shoplifting when I was a rookie.”

“Then got me into rehab and back on the straight and narrow. I’m a respectable citizen these days, thanks to you, a kindly judge and a totally cool bunch of coworkers in forensics. Which brings me back to Patrick North. Unmarried, shy, in need of a female to match up his socks.”

Romana knew where this conversation was headed. Her cousin’s mind was a one-way street. “Patrick worked with Belinda Critch, Fitz. I hate the way it all circles back to that. It feels like everyone around me knows or has a connection to somebody who was involved in her death.”

“Cops know people in forensics, Ro. It’s the nature of the biz. Belinda analyzed body fluids. She got around. You knew her, I knew her, and, trust me, so did a whole lot of men.”

“Including my ex.” Romana toyed with a fat genie bottle. Her much-anticipated shopping trip was starting to suck. “I figure Connor slept with at least two of his female coworkers. Belinda was probably one of them.”

“Connor was also taking bribes from Cincinnati drug lords.” Fitz sniffed. “Don’t sweat the loss of a creep.”

“I never sweat my losses, but marrying Connor Hanson wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”

“No, divorcing him was.”

“Good point.” Shoving her brief funk aside, Romana sprayed a cotton ball, frowned and wrinkled her nose. “This smells like jalapeño peppers.”

“It smells like Belinda Critch.”

It did, actually. Romana warded off another pang of guilt and dropped the ball into a silver waste receptacle. “Belinda’s gone, Fitz. Life goes on.”

“That’s a fact. You traded cophood for a college degree. I got my head screwed on straight and managed to work myself up the forensics ladder to a great tech job. It’s not your fault or mine that Belinda Critch is dead. Maybe it’s Jacob Knight’s fault, but no one could prove it, so one way or another, her killer’s probably still out there.”

“Not helping me here, Fitz.”

“Sorry.” A pause, then, “Do you think he did it?”

“No.”

“That’s it, just a flat no? Come on, Ro, someone put a bullet in her chest, and Jacob Knight was involved with her once.”

“If a guy I dated in high school turned up dead tomorrow, would that put me at the top of the suspect list?”

“I think you’re not sure about him, and that’s why you get twitchy when the subject comes up. You saved Knight’s life, and, bam, two days later, Belinda’s dead. Critch said Knight threatened her, so he must have believed it. Although…” She drew an air line with her finger. “Knight’s partner did stick up for him. Michael O’Keefe…” Her smile flashed quickly and dimpled. “Who am I to doubt the word of a fellow Irishman?”