ADAM PETERSON / THE GUN SAYS DEAD
The detective says, Nobody move. The note in the kitchen says, My love. The corpse in the study says, [silence].
The first suspect wears green. The second suspect wears red. The third suspect wears white, a wedding dress, a promise unfilled.
Today’s corpse was yesterday’s fiancé. Tragedy at a distance—that’s the life of our detective.
The never-again bride throw a bouquet of calla lilies over her shoulder. A perfect throw. She’s practiced. The detective catches the bouquet and begins taking fingerprints from each pouting petal.
Disappointing.
That, too, is the life of our detective.
The first suspect says, I did it. The second suspect says, I did it. The third suspect says, One Saturday morning he went fishing. When he got home I kissed his hands where they’d been cut by the fishing line. He tasted like winter midnights. He tasted like he’d been somewhere I’d visited as a child. I sensed whatever happened out on the water was a great disappointment to him. A personal failure, the retreat of something he’d considered fundamental to himself. He never went again. But here’s the thing: he brought back four gigantic bass. What do you think that means?
The detective says, I’m the how and why guy, miss. What is a different guy.
The corpse in the study says, [silence]. The corpse in the study says, [silence]. The corpse in the study says, [silence].
The detective is married. He wears a gold band. This surprises people sometimes, but then all the people he meets are suspects or murderers or corpses. Those violently wrenched from the mundanities of life. Is he one of these people or is he something else?
His wife is a dentist.
This is a clue, but to what?
The first suspect says, He owed me money. The second suspect says, He killed my father. The third suspect says, He often woke me up in the middle of the night by eating pretzels in bed. I’d be dreaming about clouds when the crunching would turn everything to ice. In the morning, there would be salt in my hair. I didn’t even know where he got these pretzels. Sometimes I’d look for them, but I’d come up empty. Is this important to the case?
The detective says, I’m not entirely sure.
The first suspect flees. The second suspect hangs himself. The third suspect finds an apartment on Dillard Street and gets a black cat named Ink. She paints the walls dark colors and sews the curtains closed. In the dark, she sits on the floor and writes confessions where there is no light to read them.
The corpse says, [wait].
The detective says, Baby, it’s over.
The third suspect says, Life was one thing and now it’s something else. That’s all it is. I solved this mystery and every other.
Adam Peterson's fiction has appeared in Epoch, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. He can be found online at adampeterson.net.