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The Chair for Charlie?

Lisa Gray

    She’d had to kill him. By lethal injection. There’d been no option. He’d been old. She knew that when he kept going off to bed in the middle of the evening. The telephone ringing. The doorbell ringing. Neither had awoken him as they usually had when he was younger. And, when he did awake, it was with a start and a wild look of wondering where he was. But it was when she’d found him lying out on the back lawn and he’d refused to come in, as day had slowly darkened into dusk, that she knew he’d lost his mind. That’s when she’d decided.
    Grace wiped a tear from her eye, unaware that her every movement was being watched through binoculars. One. It was a horrible word. A lonely word. She suspected her granddaughter, Lucy, knew that every time she looked at her grandmother. Children were wise. Wiser than adults. More observant. And more caring. That’s why Lucy had asked the question.
    Grace and she had been sitting at the dining room table playing Matching Pairs with a pack of playing cards. Lucy’s attention had wandered out through the patio doors to the table and two chairs on the outside patio.
    “Why are there two chairs?” she’d said, looking at her gran and counting one.
    Grace brushed away another tear as she thought of her granddaughter’s answer.

—————————————————


    Charlie Swan lowered the binoculars. He couldn’t suffer sentimentality. Swan by name and swan by nature. Gliding through states. Thirty. At the last count. Putting an end to the relentless river of life. He’d lost count of the number of old dears he’d seen sitting out on their patio. Alone. One. He liked the number. It made his life easier. No oneelse around.There was only one number he liked better than one. Zero. Zero old ladies sitting on their patio.
    Long ago, after his mother had died, he’d told himself that he was doing the world a favour. Disposing of dotty old ladies, no good to society any more. It was what he should have done to his mother. Before she rejected him, retreating into a relentless world of forgetfulness. Forgetfulness of yesterday. Forgetfulness of the past. Forgetfulness of him.
    He lowered his binoculars. Time to make a move.

    “Is it all right if I sit here?”
    Charlie pointed to the spare patio chair.
    “Charlie wouldn’t like it!” Grace said.
    She missed him so.
    She knew she should never have let the man in the house. Nice though he was. But loneliness made you do things that under any other circumstances you would never do. And she needed someone to talk to. When Charlie wasn’t here. And when the nice man had said he tidied up patios and gardens, that had been a bonus. The garden badly needed tidying up. And she couldn’t see her daughter, Ellen, doing it. She had enough to cope with at the moment.
    How the hell does she know my name? thought Charlie, then thought perhaps that had been the name of her husband.
    “Charlie doesn’t mind,” he said. “It’s such a lovely day. Seems a pity to waste it.”

    Detective Jay Cooper surveyed the blood spattered body on the ground next the patio table. Whoever had done it, they hadn’t wasted any time. Frequent, swift violent blows to the back of the head, using a heavy, solar powered lantern. No sign of burglary. No. He wasn’t looking for a thief. No. He knew that. He was looking for “The One”. The media had named him that. The police in thirty states had another name for him that was unrepeatable. Most of them had elderly relatives. Who lived alone. And most of them, along with the general population, were living in fear of his next strike.
    How had the bastard got off with it so long? And yet despite the mobilisation of the police departments of thirty states, he had.
    I’ll get him! If it’s the last thing I do, thought Jay. And when I do, it’ll be lethal injection for him. Or the chair! The bastard didn’t deserve the choice.

    Grace’s daughter, Ellen, opened the door of her mother’s house reluctantly. She hadn’t been back since that dreadful day. The day her mother had been murdered. She hadn’t been able to face going to the house alone so she’d brought her young daughter, Lucy, only too aware that she shouldn’t have. She’d tried to explain to Lucy that grandma wasn’t there any more. That she’d been called back. To heaven. And Lucy had seemed to take it in. That’s why her heart lurched and she got such a shock when the little girl, who was standing looking out the patio doors, said, “I know why there are two chairs.”
    Two, yes, thought Ellen. When there should be zero. I’ll have to dispose of them.
    “You do?” was all she replied to Lucy.
    “Yes. One is for Gran.”
    Ellen wiped away a tear. Her message hadn’t got through. Lucy still thought her grandmother was here.
    She unlocked the patio door and slid it open, wondering what on earth she was going to say to Lucy now.

    Charlie Swan slid down into the seat of the car situated outside the old lady’s house, just as the woman and girl entered. He shouldn’t have been here. He’d never lingered at the scene of a crime before. But curiosity had got the better of him. The old woman’s conversation, prior to her death, had haunted him. This was no ordinary old dear. No victim of old age. She’d had balls. She’d killed someone. By lethal injection. Pity the old dear had been so muddled. He’d not had a chance to find out who. Maybe if he hung around he’d find out who the unlucky sod was.

    Detective Jay Cooper’s surveillance of the scene of the crime had seemed a stupid idea to everyone except him.
    “The case is cold! Cold!” his boss had said. “The guy never hangs about the scene of the crime! You know that!”
    Sure he knew that. But something was nagging him. He knew what it was. It was the two chairs on the patio. In all the cases of the other victims there had only been one chair. One carefully observed chair. One researched chair. It was almost as if the killer liked the number one. That’s why the cops in thirty states had nicknamed him “The One”.
    Maybe the guy’s slipping, thought Jay. Getting over-confident. Maybe this case would be the break Jay needed
    I badly need it, thought Jay, thinking of the lack of fingerprints and DNA on the chair and watching the old woman’s daughter and granddaughter enter the house.

    Ellen sat down on the patio chair and bade Lucy sit on the other one.
    “That’s Gran’s chair,” said Lucy.
    Oh dear, there’s no putting it off, thought Ellen. I’ll have to try and make her understand.
    “Remember when Gran’s dog died. (She deliberately didn’t use the word put down.) And it wasn’t around anymore.”
    She watched Lucy’s face.
    “It’s a bit like that,” she said. “And remember how upset Gran was (She didn’t mention the lethal injection. She knew what a difficult decision it had been for her mother.)
    “Yes, but——————————.”
    Ellen cut Lucy off.
    “Well, it’ll be like that for us for a while.”
    “But there’s———————————————.”
    “Do you know what I mean?” interrupted Ellen.
    Lucy was about to reply when a small white terrier burst into the room and ran out on to the patio. Lucy jumped up from her chair and knocked it accidentally to the ground. The small dog started sniffing strangely at the fallen chair. The more it sniffed the more agitated it became.
    How the hell did he escape? thought Ellen.
    She’d left him in the car with the window down. She hadn’t thought it a good idea to bring him into the house. She was hoping her mum’s new dog had forgotten who his real owner was in the two weeks he’d stayed with her while her mum had been ill.
    The small white dog, nose to the ground, like a Baskerville bloodhound on the scent, impervious to everything and everyone, rushed back through the patio door and through the sitting room.
    “Come back!” yelled Lucy.
    She turned to her mom.
    “He doesn’t like it!” she said before hurrying after the dog, through the outer door of the house, that Ellen had forgotten to latch properly.
    “Lucy, come back!” yelled Ellen, to no avail.
    Detective Jay Cooper started from his slumbering surveillance in surprise to see a small white terrier rush out of the old woman’s house, closely followed by a little girl. But it was the little dog’s next action and the little girl’s words that made his blood run cold and made him change his lucky number to two.
    The dog ran across the street. For a second Jay thought he was going to run up to his parked car but the dog started leaping up and down, scratching wildly at the door of a car parked further along the road and barking like his throat was going to give out.
    “Charlie! Charlie!” called Lucy from across the road.
    Charlie Swan looked up, astonished the little girl knew his name. The old lady. Now the girl. Were they psychic?
    Her mother appeared at the little girl’s back and the little girl whirled round angrily.
    Jay Cooper could hear the little girl’s irate voice from where he sat.
    “I told you he didn’t like it! You shouldn’t have told me to sit in it! Gran knew! I told her! Gran knew he didn’t like it!”
    Lucy gazed across the road at the little dog attacking the parked car
    Jay was already out of his car and running towards it, gun gripped in hand, as he heard the little girl’s words.
    “He can always tell when someone has sat in it! And he doesn’t like it!”
    Charlie Swan’s cold sweat wasn’t due to the cop he saw running towards him. Nor to the little dog scratching the hell out of his car door.
    It was the little girl’s words.
    “No onesits in that chair!” she screamed as Jay reached Charlie Swan’s car and flung open the door.
    Jay forced Charlie Swan out of the car and snapped the handcuffs on him.
    As he was being led away, Charlie Swan heard the little girl’s final remark. The little dog had stopped its frantic jumping and barking and had run back across the road to the little girl.
    It was then he realised who the unlucky sod was.
    “It’s the chair for Charlie!” she said simply.



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