in good time

…in light of my own changing values – the expansion of my family and the recent deaths from improperly using the technique – I have decided to discontinue the practice. My last piece, a beautiful frame I spent many hours on for someone very special, will be the last of my work to display fractal burning.

I have for many years advocated for personal responsibility in lieu of common sense and safety procedures, but I have come to understand that the actions of our leaders often delivers a stronger message…

-Richard Walters

A young moon hung low overhead, spilling through the doorway of the darkened cabin, illuminating the crime scene tape that lay broken there. I pushed the editorial piece away from the glow of my camp-lamp. I'd already memorised the entire thing.

I shouldn’t be here, was missing my Elsie’s school play for it, but the mystery was too much to deny myself. Her mother would tear me a new one later, but I needed to know.

Death still staled the air.

Richard Walters had been dead for three days before someone called a wellness check in. I shut my eyes and listened to the recording from my phone.

“…ha-en’t heard fr-m him in days, get-ng worried. Ple-se send so-eone to check up on hi–RRRGGH–”

The voice, distorted by wind – driving probably – cut off abruptly with a high-pitched wail.

A rookie who checked called it in as a homicide. If it were someone who knew more, they might have seen less. Might have called it an accidental suicide with how things were: door locked, no disarray inside, just the flesh of Richard’s hand melted to an exposed electrical transformer. It blew every fuse in the goddamn place. Good thing that, I suppose, would be nothing ash otherwise.

Not that I'd been able to glean anything from it in anyway.

Shrouded in darkness with the smell of rotting meat and the frozen tight grimace of Richard’s face… Well maybe I’d have cried murder too. Took the coroner doubletime to extract him.

Luck landed the case on my desk– woodworking was a hobby of mine, and I was a fan of Richard Walters. Subscribed to his magazine. He’d built an empire. Everyone who was anyone had a Walters' original: Fused with Lightening.

The whole thing smelled funky. Didn't sit right in the chest the way some scenarios do.

There was no evidence of anyone but Richard being here that night. Nothing to suggest otherwise had been collected. But it wasn’t right. Didn’t make sense for a professional who crafted bespoke fractal burned pieces would use such a novice rig – a transformer plucked from the back of a microwave – still disassembled on his counter – hooked up to a wall outlet and jump cables.

I swung my camp-light around; light slid past my evidence bag on the counter, and what was left of his pitiful microwave, to the note I’d failed to find any information on. No calendar appointments. No recent text messages. Hell, no email confirmations!

6PM Friday

It was almost that time now. I'm not sure what I expected, being here for it, but you don't get anything without asking. The kind of shit my ex would have called manifesting or whatever the fuck she was into now.

Honestly, shamefully, this excited me more than Elsie playing rat number-three in the Pied Piper. I love that little girl, but God the kid stuff was a lot sometimes.

A solitary frame hung on Richard's wall; the one he wrote about in his editorial: a beautiful frame I spent many hours on for someone very special. It was surreal to see it, if I'm honest. I never thought in my life I'd be this close to an actual Original. Fractals flowed into rivets of perfect carvings, twisting around a picture of his grandson. His expanding family.

Except by all accounts, he’d never even met the lad.

His family made it clear as day there was no love lost between them. I pulled out my phone, pressed play on the recorded interrogations.

The son had been first:

“Tuesday, December 5th, 10:05AM. Detective Nicolas Little, interviewing Richard Walters Junior, known as Rick, and his wife, Harley Walters.”

I shifted my gaze back to the thick frame of their baby as the necessary rights were established on the recording.

“Yes, yes, we understand. Is this necessary? Sounds like the old man had an accident. Case closed. Our son has colic, okay? My father doesn’t deserve our scant moments of peace.”

“Rick!” Harley said sharply, her voice cracking at the end. “Be respectful. This is sad!”

Rick snorted. “Why are you crying? The man was backward. He could have all the girls he wanted, stay away for days. Still expected my mother to be waiting on her knees for him–”

“Rick!”

“–Expected me to worship him. He was a joke.”

“He was difficult to get along with, I take it.” I asked.

“He didn’t care about us, only cared how we made him feel.”

“That’s not true,” Harley broke in.

Rick scoffed, “What do you know? You weren’t there. Has he ever visited us? Ever even met Michael?"

Silence.

“He’s never even met his grandson?” I asked, surprised.

“Course not,” Rick snorted.

“Seems like he loved him, has a huge picture of him on his wall.”

“Wait, what?” Harley asked. “A huge pict–”

“That’s weird,” Rick cut in. “That’s fucking weird, right? He doesn’t even know him.”

“Uhh - please excuse me. I hear the baby,” Harley’s voice grew fainter as she drifted away, toward a high-pitched wail.

“Look,” Rick said, irritated, “we really don’t have time for this. Old people fall all the time. End of.”

I sighed, closed his recording. Maybe Rick was right. Maybe it was just an accident, and my instinct was nothing more than bitterness of someone I respected coming up false.

Richard’s estranged wife had if possible, less to add, than her son.

“Tuesday, December 8th, 11:34AM. Detective Nicolas Little, interviewing Maureen Walters. She has been made aware of her rights. Maureen, do you consent to this interview?”

“Yes,” she answered curtly.

“Know why I wanted to talk with you today?” I asked.

“No.”

“Where were you on the night of the 1st December?”

“Which night was that?” she asked, monotone.

“Last Friday, Mrs Walters.”

“Sleeping. You may call me Ms Atkins.”

“Your maiden name?” I asked.

“Mm.”

It went on like this for some time. Her clipped monosyllabic answers gave little away but a resentment for being there. I swiped to the end of the recording.

“That bastard tortured me for years. I’m glad he’s dead.”

“Maureen,” her lawyer cautioned.

“Do you have a key to his cabin?” I asked.

Her laughter trickled like whisky over ice, smooth and warm. “Honey, no one in this world had a key to that cabin. That prick trusted nobody.”

“Why marry him if he were such a bad man?”

“He knocked me up. All he cared about in the world was that boy, until Rick grew a mind of his own. Then Richard got bored. Always did. Projects are fun until they’re not. Why do you think Woodcraft did so well? The man churned out complex pieces because he had to keep it interesting – not for his clientele, for himself. Know how hard it is to be with a man who always wants something new?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

“Maureen–” her lawyer started.

“It’s impossible. Always competing with the next pair of big tits that comes around.”

I cut it off here. Aside from the money, this was the extent of her motive, same as the son. They would inherit his money, but I couldn’t find a single reason why either of them would need it. No bad debts, no new purchases, no real wants, needs, or desires that they'd need to cash in for.

There was the hatred, sure, but no catalyst to ignite it.

I sighed heavily. I’d been doing this for twenty years, and my gut had never steered me wrong before, but as 6PM came and went, so did my energy for this case. Richard Walters had simply lied about not fractal burning anymore. Just as he had about his family values.

“Damnit!” I shouted, frustrated. My gut churning with regret, at Elsie’s sure disappointment without me in the crowd. In my mind her sweet face fell, eyes bubbled over with tears. The risk of that weighed against further information to solve the murder of a man who never cared for anyone felt hollow now. It seeped into my bones, my muscles, my mind.

I launched my lamp into the picture frame. Glass sprinkled across the floor with tittering plinks as it shattered.

“Fuck.” Shame snaked down my spine. I flicked the flashlight from my phone on and moved to clean it up, but as I rounded on it, Richard’s phone shrilled sharply in the evidence bag. By the time I’d fished out, the screen read:

Voicemail Received

I played it as I walked back over to the frame.

“Hey Richard, it’s Declan Lune. You were supposed to call.”

As I picked the frame up, a smattering of pages fell out of the back.

“Look, like I said, this really won’t take long, but I do need your physical signature for these changes.”

Photos of Richard holding Michael lay at my feet, and a neatly folded document.

“Anyway, call me back as soon as you can.”

Michael’s birth certificate, the Jr. under his father’s name erased with White-Out, and a post it beside: You and I know the truth <3.

“And congratulations, didn’t know you still had it in you, huh-huh.”

My heart pounded at the golddust littered around me. The sound of wheels crunching up the drive as the pieces clicked into place made me jump.

The high-pitched wail cutting off the wellness check sounded just like–

Harley Walters burst through the door, panting. She stared at me, frozen in horror, for long moments.

I cleared my throat. “How did you do it, convince him to jerry-rig a fractal burning set up?”

She bit her lip.

I could see her instinct to deny it. “Michael is Richard’s baby.”

It was a statement, but she confirmed it anyway with a sob. “He was very charming,” she offered. “It was a mistake, but then Michael… Richard was so in love with him. I brought him here while Rick was at work…” she trailed off, voice breaking.

“But why?” I asked. “He was going to cut the baby into his will. Why wo–”

“Exactly!” she cut in, venomous. “He’d have ruined me! He wanted people to know. He wanted acknowledgment that he could do what his weak son couldn’t." She shook her head sadly. "I finally started to see what everyone else did. He didn't care about anyone, just whether or not you made him feel good. Why would I want him over Rick as Michael's father? Rick is devoted to him in ways Richard could never have been.”

It clicked into place like a dead weight, “You gave him the birth certificate to appease him.”

She stifled a sob. “He was prideful. I thought showing him some ownership of Michael would stop this inheritance nonsense. If he could have a link to him in some way that I could still hide, maybe that would be enough to fill his cup.”

I frowned, it still didnt make sense. “You don’t want your son to inherit?” I asked.

She wiped a hand over her nose. “He’d inherit through Rick regardless! I didn’t need Richard to destroy our lives for that, but he thought I’d be with him if he could cut off all other routes, thought… God he was a spiteful bastard! I would never have stayed with him regardless. But after what he'd done to Rick's mother...”

“How’d you get him to do it?” I asked.

She didn’t answer.

I had a hunch. “You’ve already told me. Pride. What did you say? You want a Walters' Original to hang in Michael’s room? So, he’d have something of his real father around throughout it all?

Her lips turned up in a scowl. Bingo.

“I bet it wasn’t even that hard to goad him into it,” I sighed, disappointed once again I’d looked up to this man.

She didn’t say anything.

“Probably was excited to show you how resourceful he could be for you and the baby. Just pop the back plate of a microwave off and someone would pay thousands of dollars for one fractal burned piece.”

“I had to protect my son,” she said, tears slipping down her cheeks. “He deserves to have someone be there for him day in day out, not just a fair-weather father.”

“What happened?”

“I pushed him. I wasn’t thinking, it was just instinct.”

I nodded. “And now you’re here to get your son’s birth certificate back?”

She sobbed. Turned her head just as the same colicky cry that cut off her welfare check sounded from the car.

I was losing my edge.

“Right in front of me the whole time,” I clicked my tongue. “Don’t even think about it. Harley Walters, you’re under arrest for the murder of Richard Walters,” I began, drifting off into unhelpful thoughts I’d been trying to bury since this whole ordeal started.

I’d been hoping to find redemption for Richard, largely because he reminded me of myself. Work overtaking family. I wanted him to be less of an asshole, less of a loser.

His art was impressive, but that’s all his life amounted to. In death, not a single person had a good word for him.

I checked my watch. If my back-up made good time, I might just catch the end of that play.