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Murder by Mozart

Mike Rader

    Deafening music burst around her. The fact that it was her beloved Mozart drowning her screams made her death feel more confronting.
    “Tyne, those hands of yours can only play for me, I’ve told you that,” whispered her brother, pinning her to the carpet beside her grand piano.
    She found the strength, the breath to ask, “How did you get out?”
    His fingers tightened around her throat. “That asylum couldn’t hold me. You put me in there and I always vowed you’d pay for that.”
    “You put yourself in there.” Tyne struggled, got the words out. “You killed mom and dad.”
    “Because they stole my talent and gave it to you!” he accused. “They kept telling me I was no good. You were the better one. But that’s not true and you know it.”
    Tyne’s fingers groped, gripped the small bronze bust of her favorite composer that had fallen to the floor. She smashed it across Richard’s forehead. He howled, blood streaked his face, but he maintained his grip. The madness in his eyes became electric.
    A vein throbbed in his throat.
    Her fingertips clawed for it.
    But insanity powered him.
    His strength was demonic. Superhuman. Tyne struggled in vain to slip from beneath his hulking body. She failed and he hammered the back of her head against the floor.
    “I know you think I’m crazy, Tyne, but I’m not. I can see everything clearly. I was the pianist, not you. Your fame should be mine! It should be me up there on the stage, not you.”
    Tyne could feel her mind numbing, her energy fading. She made one last desperate attempt to free herself. Her fingers jabbed at Richard’s eyes. But too late. His head swung clear.
    Now he gripped her fingers. Pressure intensified.
    “You will never play again!” His manic shout boomed in her ears. “Sister dear, you can never hurt me — I’ll make sure of it!”
    She thought she heard the snap of bones.
    She saw Richard’s eyes roll up, saw his mouth spring open in pain. Saw him slump sideways to the floor. Saw the strange dart in his neck.
    Someone switched off the music.
    A man in a white coat stood beside two uniformed patrolmen. “You’re safe now, ma’am.”
    “But my fingers,” Tyne called through a mist of terror. “He broke them. I’ll never play the piano again!”
    “They look fine to me,” the man in the white coat said.
    “I heard them snap.”
    “I think you heard us forcing the lock to get in.”

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