Otto Penzler - Murder For Love

A unique and unprecedented collection of original, never-before-published short stories by the great crime writers, including Mary Higgins Clark, Jonathan Kellerman, Sara Paretsky, Ed McBain and Elmore Leonard. Each author offers a vastly different perspective on love, murder and th eopposite sex in short fiction that proves all passion lasts a lifetime- however brief that life may be

Contrary to popular usage, the opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference. Love and hate are too closely connected to be separated by time or circumstance. As long as one exists, the potential for the other also lives. Only when love, or hate, fades into indifference do those two passionate emotions no longer share a chamber of the heart.

The stories that follow are a celebration of love. All right, let's concede that in most of these tales at least one person dies a violent death. It's just love gone wrong. There's nothing wrong with the love-it's just the people who experience it, sometimes, or those who don't.

In order for a crime of passion to occur, there must be, naturally (or, from time to time, unnaturally), a passion. Can you imagine how much one person has to love another person to want to kill? That is not a manifestation of liking someone a lot.

Stories are a little more romantic than others, some are grittier than others, some are less traditional than others, but all have great pleasures to give. It is hoped that you will find this richly flavored cornucopia of crime rewarding enough to reread on special occasions, like St. Valentine's Day or your wedding anniversary. Or the anniversary of the time you thought about being unfaithful and resisted. Or, if you didn't resist, when you were lucky enough to not get caught and didn't have to pay the consequences.

Otto Penzler

Detective John Parker walked into the Seventeenth Squad's second-floor squad room, went directly over to the command log, and signed himself present for duty at 0800 hours. The heading on the top of the page read: Sunday, April 23, 1995.

Joe Carney, a burly guy with a shiny bald head, was finishing up a night duty, typing furiously. He was clearly a man in a hurry.

"Anything doin'?" Parker asked.

"Naw. The usual Saturday-night bullshit. " Carney pulled the report out of the typewriter and said, "I'm out of here for three days."

"Have a good swing, " Parker said, and walked around the room emptying overflowing wastebaskets into a large cardboard barrel. Going back to his desk, he raised the window up as far as it would go. A spring breeze blew across the squad room. Outside, police cars were double parked on East Fifty-first Street and along Third Avenue. He watched churchgoers, dressed in their spring fineries, strolling west on Fifty-first to catch the nine o'clock Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, four blocks away. He sighed at the thought of having to work on such a beautiful day and, savoring the scent of spring, went back to his desk.

Sunday day duties were usually quiet in the Seventeenth, a good time for a detective to play catch-up on his paperwork. Parker rolled a case follow-up report into the typewriter.

John Calvin Parker had broad shoulders and deep blue eyes. At forty-seven his hair was still black and wavy, without a trace of gray. The faded razor scar that edged along his right eyelid gave his weather-beaten face a dashing air. He had just finished closing out an old robbery case with "No results" when the telephone rang. He snapped it up. "Seventeenth Squad, Detective Parker. "

"Hey, Parker, we just caught a double homicide at Forty-two Sutton Place South, " the crusty desk sergeant reported.

Parker cursed and slammed down the phone.

The crime scene was in the north penthouse apartment of a luxury co-op that stood at the edge of the East River. Two liveried doormen worked the entrance while the concierge, who stood behind a waist-high mahogany desk in the center of the elegant lobby, tended to the needs of the tenants and their guests.

As Parker stepped off the elevator into the vaulted marble foyer of the north penthouse, he was greeted by Sergeant Luther Johnston, the Seventeenth's patrol supervisor. "It's a bad one, Parker. "

"They usually are. " Parker looked at the three cops trying to console the well-dressed woman slumped on one of the foyer's gold brocaded armchairs. Her face was buried in her palms; she was crying. "Who's the lady?"

"Mrs. Elizabeth Gardner. This is her daughter's apartment. "

Parker looked at the yellow ribbon of crime-scene tape stretched across the archway leading into the living room. "What's the story, Sarge?" Parker asked. The patrol supervisor read from his notes. "Mary Ann Gardner, age twenty-nine, lived alone, her mother arrives around nine-thirty this morning to have brunch later with her, lets herself in with her own key, discovers her daughter and another woman dead in the living room, she starts screaming, a neighbor hears her and phones down to the concierge. " "And the other woman?"

"Mrs. Adele Harrison, age forty-six, lives in apartment six-teen-AS in the south wing of this building. Married to J. Franklin Harrison. "

"As in Harrison Pharmaceuticals and Harrison Aviation?" " 'At's the one. "

"Has the husband been notified?"

"Not yet. According to the concierge, he left Saturday on a business trip and hasn't returned yet. "

Parker went over and stood next to the yellow tape, his practiced eyes roaming the crime scene. The large room had a glass wall that overlooked the river and a wide terrace with lots of plants. The thick pile of the carpet was beige, and the sofas and easy chairs were covered in white moire silk. On the walls hung five Muehl paintings from his Greek Island period. Two women lay dead on the floor, their bodies about twenty feet apart. The body nearest the terrace was wearing a white silk bathrobe over a white nightgown. Her bare feet were facing the other body. Adele Harrison lay on her back about three feet in front of the steps that led down from the foyer. The corpse was dressed in an orange-and-white Chanel suit. A. 32 S &W revolver lay beside the right foot, next to an open lizard pocketbook.

Parker became aware of Elizabeth Gardner's moans and the soothing words of the cops trying to comfort her.

Sergeant Johnston whispered to Parker, "Looks like the Harrison dame comes in, shoots Gardner, then does herself."

Parker looked into the sergeant's young face, smiled, and, bending under the tape, walked into the living room.

Death's rancid stench already polluted the air. It's amazing how some of us get used to that stink, he thought, crossing the room to Mary Ann Gardner's body. She lay on her back with her arms spread out at her sides; the left eye was open, the right one closed. A jagged bullet hole gaped from the center of her forehead; blood pooled around the head, caking her long blond hair in crimson mud. The body was stiff from rigor mortis. All the blood had settled to the bottom of the body, causing lividity's blue discoloration to show through her bathrobe.

Adele Harrison's skirt was hitched up above her knees, and her left leg was bent awkwardly under the right one. Both eyes were closed and her mouth was open. Heavy powder tattooing surrounded the bullet hole in her right temple. Parker got down on all fours and, lowering his face close to the revolver, peered into the cylinder. Two rounds had been spent. He got to his feet just as Sergeant Johnston called to him, "Crime Scene just arrived."