Family Secrets
Write a story short story in a crime fiction genre
Gilles finished his only cigarette he allowed himself during the day when the crackling of his radio signaled to him that the break was over. A car had just smashed into the front of the "Golden Pig", one of the three only shops in the village of Cordes-sur-Ciel in the 82. There were no victims and the damage was minimal, fortunately the butcher shop had just lowered the curtain. The operator explained that the assailant had fled with, chasing after him, the thunderous Marjorie armed with a cleaver but that according to her, the butcher's wife wouldn't go far since she had a heart murmur.
Our gendarme was in the mood to start with screeching tires, to make the emergency light scream, hands gripping the steering wheel like the cop in Taxi 2 but remembered that he was in a 20km/h zone and that the emergency light had never been delivered. He therefore traveled at the pace of a trotting horse the hundred meters that separated him from the village square. When he showed up at the scene, there was already a gathering of two or three onlookers which forced him to raise his voice and use his elbows to make his way. The first findings were undeniable, it was again the work of the "seed eater" but this time, he had gone a little too far. The idiot! He had signed his misdeed in broad daylight and Gilles was now duty-bound to catch up with Marjorie before she cut off the head of the village's only vegan. He also calculated that the time it would take to fill out a report for decapitation following an attempted assassination would cause him to miss the Sunday steak fries and dessert, which would be just as criminal.
Meanwhile, Hervé anxiously watched for his wife's return. This discreet man with fine and expressive hands had once been forced to learn how to handle the butcher's knife when Marjorie's abdominal protrusion turned out to be a baby with fingers as graceful as his father's. He had since become a resigned man but above all, at this point in the story, a tired man waiting. So, after sweeping away the few shards of glass on the ground, he went up to reassure his ten-year-old son that the commotion of this evening must have disturbed. He found him sitting reverently on his bed, his forehead slightly wrinkled like that of a child thinking worriedly. Hervé approached, whispered to him not to worry and tapped the pillow as one invites an undecided cat to lie down. Oscar slipped under the covers and cast a last glance towards the window, the small light spots on the leaves of his bonsai were not normal, a bad cut could have weakened his tree, he would have to sharpen his pruning shears.
Gilles, arms crossed, one half of his butt on the kitchen table, stared intently at Hervé. At 6 o'clock this morning, our butcher found the lifeless body of his wife, locked in the freezer of the "Golden Pig". A curious clue, her right hand was missing a finger. Needless to say, Gilles blames himself for abandoning the search the night before for a piece of clafoutis and promises in a determined voice that he will use all means to find the perpetrator of the crime and potentially the missing finger. He had seen enough police series to gather the first elements of the investigation, he just had to step on the gas before the criminal inspectors from Albi arrived if he wanted his promotion, his emergency light… What a stroke of luck this corpse was!
Gilles grabs a cigarette that he doesn't light and sums up:
- Last night, not seeing Marjorie return, you leave the back kitchen door open and you go up to see your son who is playing with his bonsai, nothing unusual. You swallow the daily cocktail of anxiolytics, sleeping pills because your wife's snoring prevents you from sleeping and… black out. You wake up with a hangover this morning after being the starfish all night and imagine that your better half is already busy with her hands in the shepherd's pie. Not finding her in the cutting room, you go to the cold room locked from the outside where you stumble upon her frozen body…
Hervé straightens up in his chair and specifies:
- Marjorie takes care of the fridge inventory after closing, we put the padlock since the door closes badly but the key always stays on it, anyone could have trapped her… This time, "the seed" went too far, he added, mumbling.
But Gilles has a question that torments him:
- Last I heard, Madame Marjorie is still missing a finger! Are we in agreement, she had five fingers on each hand the last time you saw her?
- …
- Because there, she's missing an index! Severed! So, I'm not a forensic doctor or a butcher but with no trace of blood and given the neatness of the cut, it was severed post-mortem. The murderer was patient…Why? Why afterwards? And above all why a finger?"
Gilles reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket and draws his vibrating cell phone. It's time to go back to the station, the guys from Albi won't be long, it's over for his medal. He says goodbye to the witness and thinks about giving him his business card but remembers that he's a gendarme, not a private detective, but still tells him not to leave the area.
Upstairs, Hervé opens the curtains of Oscar's room and, sitting on the edge of the bed, strokes his sleeping hair. Oscar would prefer him not to touch his hair even if his hands are less rough, less smelly than mom's. He tightens the sheets tighter, afraid to open his eyes. Despite his gesture, it will still take him some time to no longer see the penetrating, envy-filled gaze of his pig-like mother. Time to no longer see the sow raise her finger to her pursed lips to order him to be quiet, especially not to make a noise. That was their secret, she said.