Dead Tunes by M.K. Coker

Author:M.K. Coker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Music, Police Procedural, Crime fiction, Detective fiction, South Dakota
Publisher: M.K. Coker
Published: 2020-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

When Marek exited stage coward, meaning out the back of the courthouse, he found the sky dark gray to the west, with the smudged look that meant rain. Hopefully, he’d get to the church and back before the storm reached Reunion. Already, he could hear the rumble of thunder, and he hoped that the festivalgoers were prepared for a deluge.

Next year, maybe he could make it to the Jam Off with Nikki. He’d have to ask her if she’d ever been. He hadn’t. How many gems like that hidden musical festival existed in the backways and byways of America?

Seoul was right about one thing: a life without music would be a poor one indeed. Even the ancients had carried at least one instrument with them everywhere—their voices. Marek missed singing, he realized, as he stutter-stepped to miss a crack in the concrete sidewalk.

Step on a crack, break your mother's back.

Where had that come from? And why wasn’t it “break your back”? Because that would be far more likely. Like folk music, he supposed, the origins of children’s rhymes were a mystery. They were just passed down, generation to generation. Like music. Like religion. As he entered the church, he heard the rumble, looked back out at the far-off sky, thinking he’d misjudged the storm. But the storm was still a ways off yet and now looked to veer north.

Moving into the foyer, he realized the rumble was coming from inside the sanctuary. Drawn by the sound and the vibration under his Blunnies, he could only revel in the power coming out of the huge pipe organ that scaled up the far wall behind the choir loft.

Wow. Who knew? The case forgotten, he entered the mostly empty sanctuary and dropped down on a pew behind the magician playing furiously at the organ. He looked like the Wizard of Oz, a small man with grand aspirations. Only this time, they were real, his hands running over the four-level keyboard and his feet over pedals. Occasionally, a hand would flick out to pull knobs or push them back in.

Only vaguely did he realize Pastor Cantor had dropped down next to him. The organ crescendoed into a wall of sound that equaled anything he’d heard at a rock concert. Building and building up to the finale, which made the hair in Marek’s ears scramble for cover and his bones vibrate like he was straddling a Harley. What a ride.

But like all good things, it came to an end.

“Never heard an organ before?” Tricia Cantor asked him into the resounding silence.

“Not like that.” What, he wondered, would that music look like to his synesthete daughter? Maybe he’d bring her and find out. “Ah... just the elevator music kind. That was simply... amazing.”

The man at the organ turned, red-faced, as if he’d just completed a high-intensity training bout. “Always good to make another convert.”

Tricia laughed as Marek squirmed. “Not your religious beliefs, Detective. Organs. What was that, Charles? It sounded very familiar, but I can’t quite place it.

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