Fall Guy

CHAPTER 1
    When I was little, my father once told me that during the war, the one after the one they said would end all wars, he used to kneel at the window in the dark and scan the night sky for enemy planes. You knew who the enemy was back then. You knew where he lived, too. Even so, and even though the war was fought on enemy soil, as their countries were called, it was still awfully scary. So if something woke you in the middle of the night, or if you just couldn't sleep, you couldn't help it, you'd find yourself at the window, watching the sky and wondering what if.
    When I began to cry, he put his arm around me and pressed me close. I could smell his aftershave and feel the smoothness of his white shirt against my skin. „Just listen to your mother,“ he said, „and you'll be safe.“
    Like my father so many years ago in what now seems like a simpler time, in what now seems like another world altogether, I, too, can't help watching the sky and wondering what if. Only now, you watch in broad daylight. And now I know for sure that the terrible things you worry about are almost never the ones that happen.
    As it turned out, I never did worry about the possible death of Timothy O'Fallon. Had it made the news, it might have been on one of those days when I never bothered to pick up the paper from where it landed when the delivery person shoved it through an opening in the wrought-iron gate that leads to my cottage. If not for the phone call, late the following day, I might never have heard about it at all. And even then, even when the call came, somehow, I am sorry to say, I didn't recall the name. But now everything's different. Now I know something else for sure, that no matter what happens, no matter how much time passes, I won't forget it a second time.
    „This is the part of the job I hate most,“ the detective said, „giving people bad news.“
    The moment that followed seemed eons long as I held my breath, waiting.
    „Timothy O'Fallon is dead,“ he said. And then, „I'm sorry for your loss,“ his voice full of grief, as if it were his loss, too.
    „Who?“ I asked, feeling nothing at first but relief. Not someone I loved, not a death that would crush my heart, not even anyone I knew.
    So why was I being notified?
    „Timothy O'Fallon,“ he repeated. „He was found dead early yesterday.“
    „I don't know any Timothy O'Fallon,“ I said into the phone. „I don't understand.“
    He asked my name again, repeated my address.
    I told him yes to both, that was me.
    „You're right across the street then?“
    „Yes,“ I said, „I am.“
    „If it's not too late for you, Ms. Alexander, would you mind walking over?“
    I looked at my watch, the hands glowing an eerie green in the dark. It was ten-thirty. „Sure,“ I said, „that's okay.“ Not so sure that it was.
    „I can show you the will,“ he said. „We have a copy here.“
    „His will?“ I asked, slipping one foot into the sandal I'd kicked off near the front door.
    But even then, even after I'd been told that a Timothy O'Fallon had designated me as executor of his will, I drew a blank. It wasn't until ten minutes later, when I was walking up the pea-soup-green back staircase to the detectives' squad room at the precinct across the street and up the block from where I live that it came back to me. I'd paused a moment at the top of the stairs to collect my thoughts. Dashiell, the pit bull I'd „liberated“ from a contemptible slime who'd planned to raise him to be a fighting dog, stopping, too, looking up at me to see if there was something that needed his attention, something I wanted him to do. Gently placing my hand on the top of his boxy head, I found it wet from a dripping air conditioner we'd passed under on the way. That's when I remembered the man who'd only said a single sentence to me, and that a world of time ago.
    Detective Michael Brody got up when I walked into the squad room, but stayed where he was. There was a chair at the side of his desk and I sat, Dashiell sliding to a down right next to me without being asked. Brody glanced at him, then looked back at me, thanking me for coming so quickly. He picked up his ashtray, a Mount Saint Helens full of crushed butts, dumped it into his wastebasket and then put it on the far side of the desk to make room for the will. He placed that in front of me, taking a cigarette out of the rumpled pack in front of him, pulling the book of matches out from under the cellophane.
    „You