The Murder of Emily Magillicutty

Phoebe Stuart sat outside Police Captain Johnson’s office on a perp chair. The old wooden upright’s rungs had deep scars where the backrest joined the seat from the many times handcuffs had been fastened there. It seemed an inappropriate seat for an officer of six years but no chair in the duty room was free of such unique wear marks. Phoebe had been waiting for Captain Johnson for well over half an hour. Not too happily, either. Great way to end this sucky day, she thought. In fact, waiting on a hard chair outside the captain’s office seemed almost the highlight of the day. With her divorce from Phil final, instead of having the freedom to celebrate, she had spent the day packing up all her belongings—what few she could call her own—and loading them into her Prius. She had hoped she’d have a few weeks to find another place, but, no, Phil had insisted she vacate immediately.

After four years of marriage, she thought, one would think I’d actually own more. But the apartment where she’d been staying since moving out of the Ten Oaks Estates house had been Phil’s, the furniture all his. She didn’t even own a single pot or pan. Depressing.

She shifted her body in the uncomfortable chair, her mood slipping into frustration. She fully expected to hear that her application for the detective position available had been turned down. Of course it had been. She was too young, too inexperienced. He’ll say something nice, something meant to be encouraging, then send me back to regular patrol duty, maybe for another six years. After her long day, it was hard not to think all men bastards to a certain extent—especially after dealing with Phil’s staff, who’d supervised her moving out. At that moment, she felt she’d been dumped on by all the men who had ever come into her life. And one of them had been dead since before she was born.

Phoebe looked across the duty room, a sea of desks, none neat or new. Most looked like salvage from a school auction. Some sat front to front so officers stared at each other writing their reports. Others had a grade-school arrangement. The one she had shared with two other officers sat in the middle of the crowded room under roughly stacked piles of paper and folders—work that needed completing and unfinished reports—as well as old cups of coffee, half-eaten lunches, and stale donuts. She had fought to maintain a semblance of neatness on that desk, but the two guys who shared the desk didn’t help. A few desks in the room had family pictures of spouses—rarely—but kids often enough. She’d already trashed Phil’s photo, glad she and he hadn’t had kids. One less mess in the divorce. One less pressure point Phil could have applied.

Each desk had a perp chair next to it for witnesses or suspects. The serious felons and murder suspects always ended up in holding or the interrogation rooms. But Phoebe had yet to have a case significant enough to be interrogated. Questioned in a perp chair sure.

Across the hall in the detective division, near the door, Detective Stan Bradley, a large, balding man who always seemed to be sweating through his worn sport’s jacket, was talking with a woman wearing way too much make-up and way too short a skirt. She was handcuffed to the chair. Prostitute, most likely, Phoebe thought. The woman slouched in that chair, knees open. Sweaty Bradley made no secret of looking at her large bosom stuffed inadequately and rather precariously into a black corset or down to that short skirt. Phoebe was just waiting for him to drop his pen so he could get a better angle to look up it.

Bradley worked vice a lot and really got into his work, so to speak. Phoebe rolled her eyes and looked away, catching a glimpse of herself in a mirror across the way. Though she wore a pants suit in dark blue, not some skimpy flame-red skirt the size of a napkin, she didn’t like the similarity between her body position and the prostitute’s. She slowly pushed herself up into a “proper sit,” channeling her mother at that moment. “Don’t slouch, Phoebe Ann. Only rough people slouch. Sit up proper. Knees together, ankles crossed under your chair, hands in lap. Shoulders back. Head high.” Yeah, thanks, Mom.

As a teenager, of course, she had always hated that directive, usually slouching worse as a response, which had made her mother tisk and shake her head. Then her mom had died. Phoebe had been barely out of college, less than a year into her first real job. Not that being dead ever kept her mother from popping into Phoebe’s head. Over time, Phoebe had become less balky. If she had to sit on a perp chair outside Captain Johnson’s office, she told herself, damn it, she wasn’t going to look like some hooker or druggy off the street. Not the association she wanted Johnson to make. But when she looked at that adjusted image of herself in the mirror, she sighed. Way too prim, maybe schoolgirlish, and that wasn’t the image she wanted Johnson to see either. Nope, can’t do it. Sorry, Mom, she thought, and slid a bit down in that unyielding wooden chair. She adjusted again, opening her knees just a bit, knowing pants revealed nothing as exciting as the hooker’s short skirt, and leaned a bit forward in the chair. The mirror translated that as eager—too eager maybe. Or nervous, which was worse. That’ll kill all my professionalism. Johnson wouldn’t like that in a detective. She wasn’t going to get the promotion this go around, anyway, of that she was sure, but she didn’t want to leave an impression of being inept. Then he’d never give her a chance at a step up.

Who knew there was a science to sitting? she asked herself. Damn. I do look nervous. I am nervous. Come on, Phoebes, get your head on straight. Oh, great, now I’m channeling Dad.

A glance at the big grade-school clock on the far wall let her know she’d been waiting fifty-five minutes. She sighed. And all for bad news. This sucks. Then she spied the coffee pot on the far end of the room. The coffee was never great, hardly better than roofing tar, and it didn’t usually improve after sitting around, but getting a cup was something to do. She got up and walked through the maze of desks. After pouring coffee into a foam cup, Phoebe took a sip, winced and immediately opened a little serving tub of creamer. Not that it lightened the black sludge much. Nasty stuff.

She heard a pen drop across the hall. She rolled her eyes. So predictable, Stan.

Phoebe walked back to the perp chair outside Johnson’s office and sat again, sipping at the coffee and trying not to grimace as she did so. Another glance in the mirror revealed an image she could tolerate: woman in pants suit, legs crossed, sipping at cup of coffee. Not schoolgirl or hooker. Not so eager or nervous as to call attention. She could live with that.

She finished the coffee, almost out of mercy to the foam cup and was just considering getting another dose of poison when the captain’s door banged open with enough energy to startle her. She snapped her head in that direction, knowing she suddenly looked all deer in the headlights, far from a good look.

“Officer Stuart,” said Captain Johnson.

Not warm. Not welcoming. No joy. Yup, I’m still a beat cop. Disheartened, Phoebe stood, adjusted her jacket, raised her head and smiled. She stuck out her hand. “Captain.”

He took her hand, gave it a quick waggle. The grip was crushing. When he released her, she followed him across the threshold of his office, decorated with hunting and fishing memorabilia—pictures of him with celebrities in hunting gear and holding rifles, standing over deer, elk, and bears, awards related to the Governor’s Fishing Opener, fly-fishing lures attached to burlap in a frame, an ancient pistol in a shadow box. The wall behind his chair held certificates, commendations, and a few framed newspaper articles. At sixty, Captain Johnson had amassed a good history of performance as a cop and, apparently, a man’s man.

Captain Johnson closed the door and walked around to his desk, easing his tall frame into a leather chair. “Please have a seat, officer,” Johnson said, his voice low, all business.

“Thank you,” Phoebe said. She sat at the edge of the leather straight-back in front of his desk. Suddenly she wished she had a mirror so she could see what kind of image she was projecting now. Edge of chair . . . too eager, too nervous. She eased back and crossed her legs. Better. More confident. She hoped.

Johnson picked up a folder and flipped it open, studying it. He lifted a few of the sheets stapled to the inside front cover, his eyebrows furrowed. Then he let the sheets settle and made eye contact. His steel-blue eyes were hard to read. Not cold exactly, but certainly not anything approaching warmth. Still, she knew the importance of good eye contact and held his gaze, hoping her face didn’t look too gawky.

“I see you’ve applied to be detective,” he said.

Her heart stepped up its beat. I’m so going back to patrol. She said, “Yes, sir. I’ve been a patrol officer for—”

“Six years. Yes.”

Phoebe reminded herself not to volunteer anything he could read for himself.

“Test scores are good, evaluation okay, recommendations adequate . . . hmm, but your pistol qualification . . . three tries? Really?”

She rolled her lower lip between her teeth and started to chew on the inside of her cheek. No, bad move. “Yes, sir. I apologize.” She almost went into a long explanation that her gun jammed on the first go round and she didn’t think it should have counted at all. The second time, because of the gun jam on the first try, she was just plain nervous. Luckily she’d gotten her act together on the third go and had a good score. But all that sounded like whining, and she had the good sense to hold her tongue.

Then, just past his head, in a prominent place on his awards wall, Phoebe saw that Johnson had no less than four awards for markmanship with a handgun and rifle. Great.

He closed the folder firmly. “I have three candidates for detective, Officer Stuart, and one slot open.”

Yup. Here’s where I get the thanks-for-applying line and the better-luck-next-time encouragement with a caviat to improve my shooting. Phoebe felt her face scrunching.

“Both the other candidates have better shooting scores,” he said, and she mentally started to leave the room, slinking away like a dog with her tail between her legs. “But I think your other tests were much better than theirs.” She mentally scooted back to the chair and sat perfectly straight, as if waiting for a doggy treat.

He stood. She wasn’t sure what that meant. Had she gotten the position or not? Had she missed something? He leaned toward her over the desk and stuck out his big hand. Then he grinned. He actually grinned. “Congratulations, Officer Stuart, you are now a detective.”

She stood, knees shaking, and took his hand. His grip finished crushing her hand to pulp, and he pumped her arm several times hard, shaking all her arm bones into her elbow. “Report to Detective McKenna Monday morning at eight.”

She was trying to catch up to what had just happened. Against all odds, had she just become a detective? Still working to survive the handshake, Phoebe tried to smile. “Thank you, Captain,” she said. “I won’t let you down.”

His smile widened, and she knew she’d traipsed into being ludicrous in the shock of the moment. He let go of her hand, which looked like a mangled pop can, and she took a step to the side of the chair in preparation of leaving.

“Oh,” he said, and Phoebe took the step back, trying not to make the move look obvious.

“Yes, sir?” she said.

“I see in your file that you’re recently separated.”

“The divorce was finalized today.”

“Sympathies, of course. Being a cop is hard on marriages, especially a marriage like that. The question is, are you keeping your married name or going back to your maiden name?”

Her mind caught on “a marriage like that.” What did that mean? Her husband—ex-husband officially now—was a state representative. Not a high ranking one, though his swelled ego saw it as a step to becoming governor. She flashed to the conversation when Phil had told her she wasn’t the kind of wife he needed for his political career. Maybe Johnson has a point.

“Um, I haven’t decided yet, sir.” Truth was, she hadn’t given her name any thought. To get to positive thoughts about her new life, she had to sort her current one. Step One. Get divorce. Done that. Step Two. Move out of Phil’s rental apartment to finish the separation from him. Done that just today. Big Step Three. Get long-shot promotion. Even done that. But she still had to complete Step Four. Move in with her aged aunt because Phoebe couldn’t afford an apartment of her own. Not after what Phil had pulled. Maybe it was a marriage like that.

“It’s Magillicutty, right?” Johnson asked, pulling Phoebe back to the moment.

“Yes.” And Phoebe flashed to an image of her dad, solving murder cases right and left. Was he the underlying reason she had aced out the other two in her bid for detective, even with poor marksmanship? Was her step up to detective just nepotism?

“Zephalon Magillicutty,” Johnson mused. “Who the hell names their kid Zephalon?”

“Not too many parents, I hope, sir.”

He chuckled. “I worked with your dad, of course. Since long before you were born. Old Zip Magillicutty was a hell of a cop in his day—smart detective, great all-around guy. The county attorney never had a problem with any case he brought to them. Sharp guy, that old Zip. Couldn’t get much past his careful eyes. I still miss him.”

“Yes, sir,” Phoebe said. “Me, too.” But she didn’t really. Yes, her dad had been a good detective—she had four boxes of awards and commendations to prove it. More than Johnson had spread out on his office walls. He’d hunted and fished, too, right along with the best of the man’s men. But as a father, he had been rigid. That was on a good day. She remembered him as scary, often mean, and impossible to please. She had never experienced any warmth from the man. He’d always seemed to look at her with a kind of permanent disappointment. She was never smart enough, skilled enough, good enough at anything to get a whiff of pride out of Old Zip Magillicutty. Maybe it was just that she wasn’t a boy, wasn’t—

“When Skip was killed,” said Captain Johnson, “it took all the stuffing out of Zip.”

—wasn’t Skip. She figured her father’s issue with her was that.

She had no memory of Zephalon Chancery Magillicutty, III. He’d died in Afganistan before she was born, after Zip’s divorce from his first wife. After his marriage to Gertrude, too, but certainly before Phoebe came on the scene. By that time, whatever Zip had been before his son died had long since died or dried up, and the detached disapproval she’d always felt from her father was all that had been left. Old photos showed Zip to be a vibrant, smiling mountain of a man, an avid hunter, great fisherman, even better detective. She’d never known that man. The photo albums handed down to her were filled with pictures of a stranger no more familiar to her than the half-brother who died three years before her birth. Skip looked like a younger version of her dad.

“Yes, sir,” Phoebe said. “He thought the world of Skip.”

“He lost the will to live after Skip died.”

Yet he’d had another child, not that Zip noticed much. Lung cancer set in before Phoebe started grade school. The last year of his life, Zip had been a shriveled hollow hulk of angry invalid, bitter and raging most of the time. At his death when Phoebe had been in junior high, her mom had breathed a sigh of relief—not because Zip was out of suffering but because she was free of him. At least that was Phoebe’s assessment.

“Yes, sir. He loved Skip.”

Captain Johnson eyed her. She knew she’d said that last bit as if Old Zip had loved Skip but hadn’t ever loved her, but . . . well, there it was.

“Whatever you do with your name is fine, of course,” Captain Johnson continued. “Your choice. But I’d decide sooner rather than later, if I can give you a bit of advice. A change in rank and duties is a kind of new start. You’ll be across the hall and under McKenna. If you’re going to switch back to Magillicutty, it’d be best to do it now and not down the road. Less confusing.”

“I’ll give that serious thought, sir. Thank you, sir.”

She reached out with her poor, crushed, mangled hand and went in for one last shake. He gripped her hand hard, harder than either of the other shakes, reducing that dented pop can to jelly. And he pumped it really hard for good measure, which came close to dislocating her shoulder—probably would have had she any bones left in her arm—and clapped her on the shoulder for good measure, which felt like he had completely detached her rotator cuff. She left his office wondering if she could get workers’ compensation for injuries sustained while getting a promotion.