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    Expectation: A Francesca Fruscella Mystery
    Expectation: A Francesca Fruscella Mystery
    Expectation: A Francesca Fruscella Mystery
    Ebook92 pages1 hour

    Expectation: A Francesca Fruscella Mystery

    By Jeffrey DeShell

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    About this ebook

    On the surface a murder mystery—a detective’s search for the killer of five people in Denver—Expectation is also, among other things, a meditation on the relationship between language and music.

    In his newest novel, Jeffrey DeShell draws on the musical innovations of Arnold Schoenberg—by turns traditional, serial, and atonal—to inform his grammar and language. Moving progressively through specific Schoenberg compositions, DeShell complicates the surface of his text into lyrical derivatives, all the while drawing us into a murder mystery like no other as Detective Francisca Fruscella pursues both the killer and her own complicated personal history.

    By turns rapturous, rigorous, and gripping, Expectation is a thriller of another kind—and a bold venture to the limits of the mystery genre and language itself.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Alabama Press
    Release dateSep 15, 2013
    ISBN9781573668439
    Expectation: A Francesca Fruscella Mystery

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      Book preview

      Expectation - Jeffrey DeShell

      heart.

      CHAPTER 1

      Fünf Klavierstücke op. 23

      I. sehr langsam

      Investigation of murder involves the ability to recognize and articulate patterns: sometimes the patterns are spatial, evidence restricted to specific sites. Motifs of time require the detective to excavate and sift, fact often the wallflower, remains reluctant, outline blending into obscure background. Crimes of passion are the easiest to understand and solve: love, often wonderfully sweet, can leave horrific stains, blotting through white sheets, marks on paper indicting their author. After choking or stabbing, killers, now the aggrieved, are truculent, victims forced into self-protective acts. Patterns of psychopaths can frustrate the detective: in examining and comprehending deviance, often the investigator falters, comforting logic overwhelmed by true strangeness. Scenes of psycho-murder are the most difficult, with all gathering and analyzing futile initially, the design appearing only in repetition, vanishing until a subsequent recurrence.

      The corpse is vital, a dominant component of the pattern. The body originates both the crime and the investigation: it's the key signature to the piece. Motive is secondary, only a lesser component. Like a Brahms melody created through the demands of harmony, the motive can actually distract from recognition, leading the investigator down cul-de-sacs, allowing the more productive trails to cool. The corpse here, indeed everything first noticed, seemed to fit seamlessly into the affair-gone-wrong husband-prime-suspect television stage set of the Oxford hotel room. The body, that of a tanned and toned woman in her wealthy thirties, was nude, tied spread eagle on the bed. A large plume of dried blood shocked the cream colored wall: both carotid arteries had likely been severed.

      Detective.

      Detective.

      What are you doing here?

      I was in the neighborhood.

      This is my case.

      I know that. Don't get nervous.

      I'm not nervous. Stay out of my way.

      If you need any help…

      I won't. Stay out of my way.

      While he turned abruptly, almost tripping over a technician, I surreptitiously, without gloves, examined her clothes—a nice size four Armani jacket suit and matching skirt—that were carefully folded and hung over the chair. He was right, it wasn't my case, and I was in the way. But he'd never acted like that to me before.

      I stepped closer. The flesh was firm: she pilatied and watched her diet. She undressed well, her skin was clear, limbs shaped and displayed for maximum effect. It hadn't been enough: her killer had been unimpressed. He'd done nothing but cut her throat. He'd killed dispassionately, the knife slicing clinically, tissue parting and opening without resistance. She stretched out elegantly, too pampered to be someone's woman kept. And didn't that pose, stiffening, indicate clearly that she was a willing participant, expecting not dreading her partner's return?

      Leave. Now.

      The dick returns, abrasive.

      I don't want or need your help.

      CHAPTER 2

      Vier Lieder op. 2

      I. Erwartung

      I closed my office door and opened the window blinds, letting the late afternoon April sun stream through. The bright yellow light was stronger than I expected and I squinted, shielding my eyes with my hand. Looking down at the small entrance plaza, and then at the parking lot across the street, I thought about all the work I had: a likely gang drive-by and a relatively straightforward escalated barfight. The image of that woman at the Oxford—tanned limbs against the white of the sheets, the black blood dark against the cream colored wall—came to me and I began to feel sorry for her. I hadn't felt anything while I was there, save a mild interest in trying to uncover a pattern. But now, as I thought of her splayed open, well, I hoped they didn't find me like that. No matter who or what she was, that was no way to go out. And Benderson's behavior

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