CONCEPT
This is the beginning of my NaNo novel, YGB. (I’ve changed the title many times already…)
It is a murder mystery, but is far less bleak than what I wrote last year.
* * * * *
CHAPTER ONE
Madeleine knew that what she saw was a corpse.
It slumbered drunkenly, painfully, upon its twisted right arm, and muddy gray blood frowned from the bullet wound.
Madeleine stood, the paper in her hand, her nightgown rustling around her pale ankles, and she studied the figure two houses down.
He was middle-aged, middle-sized, muscular, African American, with a black cotton cap and gray mittens. He lay in fetal position, his blue and white jacket billowing out, and almost seemed curled up to escape the cold, except for that one unhappy hand, twisted under, then out and up. That hand almost seemed to beckon her.
The street was empty. At 5 A.M., in Detroit, in February, she’d expected this. Cautiously stepping back toward her door, Madeleine looked far down the avenue, towards Gratiot. Nothing but carbon lamps waiting for sun. She turned back towards the corpse. He lay still. She noticed a tear in his coat, below the left shoulder. She noticed his head was bruised, presumably where he’d hit the sidewalk. And again, the bullet hole, bloody gray.
Madeleine shuddered and stepped inside her house again. She locked her door. She walked briskly through the living room and on through the kitchen, passing the light switch without hesitation. She stepped to the back door and locked it. She returned to the living room, picked up the phone, and sank into a beaten yellow chair, one-third her own age. She dialed the police.
“There is a body on my street, two houses down,” she said, and gave them her address, and described what she had seen.
“We’re sending someone over,” the woman said. “Are you sure he’s dead.”
”I believe he’s been shot,” Madeleine answered.
“Did you see any sign of blood?”
“I think I may have.” Her steady voice belied her uncertainly worded answer.
“You may have?” asked the woman.
“He wasn’t bleeding on the sidewalk, no. There was a hole in his head, I think. I think it might have been a bullet wound.”
“Did you see blood?”
“I think so. I’m not sure. I’m color blind. I cannot see the colors red or green.”
A pause.
“Men are color blind.”
“Well, evidently old women are too, because leaves and sunsets are all the same to me.”
This wasn’t entirely true… in fact, Madeleine could see yellows quite vividly, but she was tired of this persistent misperception… she’d had sixty-seven years experience with her color-blindness, and wasn’t excited to have such a record doubted.
The woman on the line told Madeleine to lock the doors and stay inside. Madeleine agreed. The woman then ran through the usual line of questions: Did she notice anyone coming or going (“no”), had anyone unusual been in the neighborhood lately (“no”), and did she know the people who lived in the house in front of which she had seen the corpse.
This last question, she answered “yes.” The Hunters lived there; she’d been friends with the family since they’d moved in six years prior, and just the night before she’d stayed up until ten, talking to Antoine Hunter and his friends. She hoped that the corpse would be gone before Antoine awoke. She’d briefly considered knocking on the Hunters’ door, in the back, and telling them what she’d seen. The idea, she knew, was ridiculous.
After twenty-minutes, the police arrived, and Madeleine got off the phone and filed a statement. The police asked similar questions to the woman on the phone, so Madeleine gave confident answers.
“Are you sure you didn’t see anyone?” they asked.
“No one.”
“And did you hear anything suspicious last night?”
“I didn’t. But I am a very heavy sleeper.”
“A gunshot went off two houses down, you’d hear it ma’am.”
“I do think I would.”
Finally, with the sparkling sun rising over the Seven Sisters to the East, the police bagged the body, climbed back into their cruisers and paddy wagon, and drove back towards the Big Buildings, ambulance in tow. Madeleine, more comfortable now that the spectacle was removed, turned the lights on, prepared a cup of tea, and sat down to read the paper.
Her eyes ran over the same headlines repeatedly, however.
She was still thinking about the body.