A Fate Worse Than Death
Detective Sergeant David
Starsky stood on the beach and watched Jennie examine the prone figure lying in
the sand. The photographer, a young intern for the
Detective Sergeant Ken
Hutchinson was staring off into the distance, focused on the tranquility of the
day instead of the macabre dance taking place near the water. The sun was
shining high in the sky as puffy white clouds drifted slowly across the
horizon. Gentle waves lapped against the sandy beach. He shook his head briefly
before turning to Starsky.
“What is that old saying?
It’s a beautiful day for dying? Why, Starsky? He had everything. Why would he
do something this…final?”
Starsky turned away from the
scene on the beach and gazed at the house behind them.
“I don’t know. Let’s see if
we can find out.”
They walked up the beach to
the simple ranch-style home, carefully avoiding the footprints in the sand.
Despite the sunshine, the day had taken on a somber quality that seemed to seep
into the very bricks and foundation of the house. Pushing the patio doors open,
Starsky and Hutch stepped into the room. The interior was as understated and
elegant as the exterior. The walls were covered with light-colored paneling and
small light fixtures hung from various points in the ceiling, illuminating the room.
Bookshelves took up the entire back wall and a large, antique writing desk
dominated the center.
Hutch walked slowly around
the room, looking at the certificates, plaques and photos that hung on the remaining
walls. He stopped at a grouping of pictures, studying each one closely. Again,
he shook his head.
“Why would he do it? I don’t
get it. I just don’t get it.”
Starsky was standing in
front of the desk, examining the objects sitting on it without touching
anything. His eyes strayed to a stack of papers lying beside the typewriter.
Picking up the top piece, he read what it said before turning to Hutch.
“I think I do.”
A few hours earlier
Kevin Mallory sat hunched
over his typewriter, his fingers hitting the keys in a blur of speed. His eyes
were focused on the white sheet of paper in the carriage, not on the keys.
Years of use had taught him the placement of the letters and time had worn the
black lettering from the keys. For now, the words were flowing in a direct
connection from his mind to the paper. His body was simply a tool to get them
there. After a few minutes, he stopped and read over what he had typed.
“Trollop? What the Hell did I say that for? This isn’t the
seventeen hundreds, for God’s sake!”
He took the bottle of white
out and carefully covered the offending word, muttering all the while. Those
kids at Kerry’s Publishing wouldn’t have the faintest idea what a trollop was.
They were barely out of college and already thought of him as “the old
dinosaur”, albeit with fondness, he hoped. Sighing with frustration, he read
over the paragraphs he had written. Grumbling again, he reached for the worn
Thesaurus sitting beside his cup of coffee. Damn
it, how hard can it be to find a suitable synonym for whore? His eyes
jumped spasmodically from the thesaurus to the paper in the typewriter and
back, until he threw the offending dictionary away from him with a roar of
frustration.
“Aaaargghhh!”
His entire train of thought
was gone, derailed by one simple, irretrievable word. He laughed scornfully. Derailed?
This train was more than just derailed. It was heading for a one way trip off
the side of a cliff. Suddenly, the implacable presence of the half-filled paper
in his typewriter was more than he could face. He jumped out of the chair and
paced around the room, a room that had been his source of comfort and
inspiration for over forty years. Now, the plaques on the walls, the books on
the shelves, and the trusty old typewriter seemed to stare back at him, mocking
him.
What’s the matter, Genius? Did you forget what you
wanted to say? Are the words on the tip of your tongue? Elusive little buggers,
aren’t they? Well, don’t look at us. Those awards aren’t going to do you much
good now, are they? And you thought you were invincible. Ha! The jokes on you, Mr.
Edgar Award Winner.
Mallory glared at the
picture of himself on the wall.
“Oh, shut up!”
He took off his glasses and
pitched them carelessly on the desk then ran his fingers through his short
brown hair. It was only in the last few years that the grey had become
noticeable and only then at the temples. Amelie had told him that it made him
look distinguished, along with his black horn-rimmed glasses. He looked at the
small hand-sewn tapestry hanging beside his picture.
“Like a fine wine, you’re simply getting
better with age.”
Oh, God, what a joke that turned out to be! He paced around the room, arguing with himself. Enough of this pity party! Calm down. Focus!
It’s not the end of the world. You can do this! His shoulders slumped
dejectedly. Yeah, right. It’s a piece of
cake. As long as I keep thinking positive, everything will be all right. He
laughed bitterly. Well, that’s the
problem, isn’t it? Some day, I won’t be thinking at all.
He wandered over to the bookcase
sitting directly behind his desk. In it, elegant leather-bound books sat
nestled on green velvet covered shelves. These were his “children”, born from
years of blood, sweat and tears. From his first novel, which brought him dozens
of rejection slips before catching Carmine Logan’s eye, to his latest
best-seller, these works of literary art were what made his life worth living.
By the time he was fifty, he’d had more novels on the best seller lists than
any other contemporary author. Seven of his last ten novels had stayed at
number one for over eight months. Now, at sixty-two, he was as respected by his
peers as he was adored by his fans. To the rest of the world, Utopia may not
really exist. But in this room, for him, it did. The knowledge that in just a
few short years he was going to lose it all was almost too much to endure. For
all the diabolical plots his imagination could invent, the most twisted one was
the path his life had taken now: he was a best-selling author with Alzheimer’s.
He raised his fists, shaking
them at the ceiling above his head. “Why, God? Why this? Why didn’t you just
give me cancer, or put me in a car and run it over an embankment? Why not cut
off my hands or put out my eyes? WHY THIS, HUH? I mean, what is this? Your idea of
some kind of divine irony? Poetic justice? Is
this some cosmic joke? WHAT DID I EVER DO TO YOU? WHY ME? HUH?” He collapsed in
his chair as the anger left him and stared in bewilderment at the paper in the
typewriter. “Why me?”
Mallory clenched his fists
together and willed his breathing to slow. Focus!
Damn it, you can do this! If this book was going to be his swan song, he
was going to make it his best. He was determined to go out not with a whimper,
but with a bang. Rubbing his eyes with his knuckles, he settled his glasses
back on his nose and began to type, resolutely pushing all thoughts of his fate
from his mind. Slowly at first then picking up speed, he found that tenuous
connection with his muse and catapulted himself back into the story.
Okay now, now we’re talking. This train’s really
chugging along now. Yeah, that’s it. Keep going. You can do it!
For two hours, he typed and
typed, stopping only long enough to snatch one filled piece of paper from the
carriage and replacing it with a blank one. Finally, he pulled the last page
from the typewriter and scrawled the last two words by hand: The End. With a
deep satisfaction, he read over the last pages of his manuscript, searching for
typos. Suddenly, he blinked, shook his head, blinked again and tried to focus
his eyes. As if taking on a life of their own, the words he was reading
wavered, fading in and out, and finally dissolving into a mass of meaningless
lines.
“NO!!!”
With trembling hands, he set
the papers down on the growing pile and took off his glasses. Eye strain,
that’s all it was. He’d pushed himself to the limits of his endurance and now
his eyes were rebelling. Give it some time, and the words would make sense
again. They would. They had to.
Mallory stared into space. But for how long? No
one, not even those fancy doctors at the hospital, could tell him how long it
would be before his mind betrayed him. The road into darkness was long, and at
the end of it, he wouldn’t even know he was traveling toward his death. Slowly,
he put his hands on the desk and cradled his head on them, his shoulders
shaking with his grief and despair.
Finally, he sat up, wiping
his eyes. “I can’t do this.” He took a deep breath and shook his head,
repeating the words with determination. “I can’t do this.”
A sense of calm purpose came
over him as he reached into the center drawer of his desk and pulled out a
sheet of silver-embossed paper. He smiled briefly at the heading: from the pen
of Kevin Mallory. The stationary had been a gift from his wife after his very
first novel sold and she had smiled wisely as she told him it was simply a sign
of things to come. With steady hands, he took a chrome-plated pen from the
cherry wood cup on his desk and started to write.
My dearest Amelie,
What can I say to you? Forty
years isn’t nearly long enough. I was just a struggling young writer when we
met, with more dreams in my head than pennies in my pocket, and yet you saw
something in me that no one else had. You turned more hovels that weren’t fit
for human habitation into homes than I can count. You found more uses for
hamburger meat than any other wife in the universe and invented more culinary
labels for bologna sandwiches than I thought possible. When other wives would
have ran screaming from our lives in despair, you stood by me with a smile on
your face and love in your eyes. Never once, in our darkest days, did you doubt
me. With all of that, how can I expect you to understand why I would willingly
leave you now? I always believed I could suffer a thousand defeats as long as
you were with me, but this is one loss that I simply cannot endure.
How can I explain what it
means to lose the very thing that has given my life meaning? You are my heart
and my strength. You are my first thought in the morning and my last thought at
night. I thank every deity I know for sending you to me. But my soul belongs to
my muse. To think that someday I won’t recognize your precious face is hard
enough. To know that the very words I have written will someday be reduced to
lines on a piece of paper, illegible, indecipherable, meaningless lines, is a
fate worse than death. I could withstand the indignity of being totally
dependent for my most basic needs as long as you were the angel taking care of
me, but I cannot abide losing the ability to think, to imagine, to dream.
Your smile is brighter than
the brightest ray of sunshine, your strength rivals the largest mountains, and
your heart is bigger than the universe. I have made my living from putting my
thoughts into words, and yet I cannot tell you how lucky I am for knowing you. It
is my only regret that I cannot take credit for the three most precious words
ever thought, ever spoken, ever written:
I love you.
Yours forever,
Kevin
Mallory put the letter down
on top of his last manuscript, beside the picture of Amelie that sat on his desk.
He touched his lips with his finger then tenderly touched the picture. Slowly,
he walked to the glass patio doors and gazed for a moment at the serenity of
the beach. Slipping his shoes and socks off, he opened the doors and walked
toward the water. He didn’t glance at the hammock swaying gently in the breeze,
the hammock that he had shared with Amelie on warm spring days. He didn’t hear
the soothing sounds of the water lapping at the beach, sounds that seemed to
keep out the rest of the world as they made love on balmy summer nights. He
didn’t feel the sand under his feet, the silky texture that caressed his skin
as he had caressed Amelie’s for so many years. He didn’t notice the warmth of
the water as it covered his legs, and lapped at his waist. He saw without truly
seeing the stunning picture of the horizon that had drawn them to this beach so
many years ago. With his wife’s face forever imprinted on his mind, he kept
walking into the gentle surf until he could walk no more then let it draw him
peacefully under.
Present time
Hutch read the letter that
Starsky handed him then looked through the patio doors to the beach. He saw a
woman running toward the prone figure on the sand, now covered with a sheet,
and watched as Amelie dropped to her knees beside the still form of her
husband.
As he watched the tragic
scene unfold, he heard the front door open. Captain Harold Dobey walked
silently into the room and stood beside his men.
“It’s true, then? It’s him?”
Starsky nodded. “Yeah, it’s
him. By tonight, everyone will know that Kevin Mallory committed suicide.”
Dobey watched as the
uniformed policemen gently escorted Amelie Mallory up the beach and away from
her husband’s body.
“Why? Why would he do it?
What could happen that was so bad that he’d kill himself?”
Starsky looked over at the
letter Hutch was still holding in his hand.
“A fate
worse than death.”