Buffalo Bayou: A Noir Crime Thriller by Tom Abrahams

Author:Tom Abrahams [Abrahams, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Piton Press LLC
Published: 2021-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

***

Miles Davis played “So What” as I pulled up to the scene. I hadn’t really heard the music the entire twenty-minute drive. My mind reeled from the interaction with Stella. She’d played me. I knew she had. But I was okay with it. Any connection with her, however one-sided, was worth it.

Sure, I was fatalistic about everything. To me, hope was a fallacy. It was a construct to give people a reason to live. Like heaven. Or the lottery. All of them offered the idea of something they’d achieve if they tried. You can’t win if you don’t play, right? At least, that was the idea.

But for some reason, Stella made me want to believe in something. That’s not to say I did. Because I didn’t. But the sentiment was there. For some reason.

The Chrysler rattled when I turned off the ignition. Mym was at the tape. Waiting.

“Took you long enough,” she said. “I expected you ten minutes ago.”

“Wife problems.”

She lifted the tape and an eyebrow. “Oh? Everything okay?”

“Depends on your definition. Let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk about the case.”

We were in front of an older, one-story house surrounded by newer two- and three-story houses. It was a ranch, probably built in the sixties or seventies. This was a neighborhood going through its latest gentrification. It squeezed out longtime homeowners in favor of younger, wealthier couples looking for a shorter commute into the city. Whoever owned this house hadn’t sold out yet.

Mym led me up the walk. Red and blue lights strobed on the home’s brick façade. The front door was open. The interior lights were on. The place was abuzz with activity.

“Body’s still here,” she said. “ME hasn’t arrived. They’re overworked like we are. We were lucky to get forensics out here as fast as we did. I thought it might be another hour.”

We stepped across the threshold, and the air changed. That happened at murder scenes. Something about death had an effect on the immediate surroundings. The kind of thing that could make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Which happened. But it wasn’t because of some vague sense about the place. It was the odor. The blood.

If there was enough of it, blood carried a scent. It changed the chemistry of a place. And it was an odd, metallic odor that was impossible to forget or mistake for anything else.

“Yeah,” Mym said as if she’d read my mind. “It’s a messy one. Bodies are through here.”

“More than one?”

“Three. Looks like a murder-suicide. At least, that’s the initial thought.”

It was a traditional floor plan. No open concept like the newer models. This house had a living room on the left and a dining room on the right. The kitchen was at the back of the house on one side. Three bedrooms and a single bath occupied the other half.

Most homicides were between or among people who knew each other. Friends, family, estranged friends and family. It was far more likely someone died at the hands of a killer they knew than a stranger.

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