Carol O’Connell - Shell Game

He had always maintained that he would end it when the last six minutes of joy were sucked out of life, and he must credit Mallory for that. But at least, she had not selected the day and the hour. She was ruthless enough, but not that talented. The timing was his own.

Faith faltered, and he looked behind him one last time. His legacy was still sitting on the coffee table, and Mallory was nowhere in sight.

Fool. Of course, she isn’t there.

But then, in thoughts of her, he made a misstep in his mind, and then his foot stumbled on the ledge.

He was in flight.

Too soon!

Too late. His arms waved wildly as he struggled to form his body into a swan dive, aiming for grace. His head pointed toward the street; his arms spread on the air as it rushed around his head, ripping the breath from his mouth. The lights of independent windows melded into bright streamers of electric yellow. And the pavement was coming up to kiss him on the lips as he flew ever nearer to the insects who were waiting for his close-up shot.

There were only seconds left to congratulate himself, for Max Candle could never have topped this finale:

Nick smiled for the cameras.

Or such was his intention.

The television film captured an expression of extreme horror, but only the tape of his scream was allowed to run on the morning news.

Later in the day, the Chicago police counted five locks at the entrance to the dead man’s penthouse, and despite this show of concern for security, the door had been left wide open. A search of the premises had turned up no suicide note, no personal papers of any kind. Based on a shredded photograph found on his coffee table, it was theorized that an affair with a younger man had gone tragically awry, and the deceased was written off as just another jumper in a city of tall buildings and lost loves.

There was only one remarkable aspect to the otherwise mundane death of a public relations man: A lone woman had been waiting in the street when the first camera crew arrived. Though there was not one clear photograph of her face, it was reported that she had been looking skyward minutes before the jumper appeared on the ledge. But it was not her prescience that made her newsworthy; it was her behavior while a human being was hurtling to his death – when every other pair of eyes was riveted to that screaming, flailing, falling body.

Her travesty went unnoticed until the film and photographs were reviewed. In wide-angle shots of crisscrossing lenses, taken among the frenzied newsprint and television media, the tall blonde could be seen turning her back on the spectacle in the sky. She was walking away from the circus – at the moment of impact.

Born in 1947, Carol O'Connell studied at the California Institute or Arts/Chouinard and the Arizona State University. For many years she survived on occasional sales of her paintings as well as freelance proof-reading and copy-editing.

At the age of 46, Carol O'Connell sent the manuscript of Mallory's Oracle to Hutchinson, because she felt that a British publisher would be sympathetic to a first time novelist and because Hutchinson also publish Ruth Rendell. Having miraculously found the book on the 'slush pile', Hutchinson immediately came back with an offer for world rights, not just for, Mallory's Oracle but for the second book featuring the same captivating heroine.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Hutchinson sold the rights to Dutch, French and German publishers for six figure sums. Mallory's Oracle was then taken back to the States where it was sold, at auction, to Putnam for over $800,000.

Carol O'Connell is now writing full time.