Chapter 1 by Ken Bingham
Chapter 2 by Kathleen Volk Miller
Chapter 3 by Fred Siegel
Chapter 4 by Paula Marantz Cohen
Chapter 5 by Scott Stein
Chapter 6 by Dan Driscoll
Chapter 7 by Scott Warnock
Chapter 8 by Robert Anthony Watts

Detective Phallic was surprisingly quiet on the short ride over to 34th and Powelton.

Good.

If circumstances were different, I might have chided him for his stupidity. If it were a bunch of kids protesting homework, it is unlikely some college boy named Rowling would suddenly be bumped off. It would have been a good time for creative invective, but instead I chose forbearance. I needed to think.

Abioseh Porter. His manner was even and confident and I got that he was trying to tell me something. I recognized the Michener quotation; and who would know about perseverance better than Michener, who wrote about a thousand books all with places in the titles? I didn’t recognize the other quotation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had a clue in it. I made a mental note to visit Porter again, sans partner, to see what he had in mind.

Ray Brebach also might have known something. Despite his popularity and the fact that he obviously knew his stuff, he was one of the oddest ducks in the pond. He seemed way too interested in my investigations into the Paginator case, not that I was in a position to tell him anything, and not that there aren’t plenty of otherwise decent folk who get off on serial killer lore. But even so, it seemed strange that when Willy shoved himself into the office, Brebach got ants in his pants. And why would Brebach give the names of those three benign kids? They seemed to be the kind of kids who might have written mean things on each others’ Facebook pages, but they wouldn’t have burned a pile of books.

And finally, I reflected on my little felony; nestled with my car keys and the wallet that used to hold my detective badge was a spork with a long blonde hair. I doubted the hair was from Ginny. When I last saw her she had short, spiky hair and while it was a couple of years ago I don’t think this short, spiky hair had the time to get this long. Also, while Ginny is known for stomping on hearts, she has shown zero interest in burning books. Or killing college kids.

No, the evidence I unlawfully concealed was a message. And this message was for me.

“We’re here, Schnoz.”

Willy the schmuck jumped out the car and waddled towards the shaken kid sitting with his head in his hands beneath three huge Greek letters on the front stoop. I was playing Kato to Willy’s Green Hornet, so I took out my Dollar General note pad and a Chinese pencil. Neither was department issue, but right now neither was I.

Willy went, “Are you the kid who called?” The kid nodded grimly. “What’s your name, son?”

“Charles O’Malley.”

“What happened?”

Charles O’Malley took a sip of Vitamin Water. “I came home from my chem recitation at like 12:25. I walked in the door two steps, saw what was on the sofa, and walked out. That’s when I called 911.” He clenched his phone to his forehead. “You got here fast.”

“When we hear about a potential homicide we go fast,” Willy intoned with cop show intensity. “How do you know the kid’s dead?”

Charles O’Malley looked up at Willy with a shock of passion. “Look at him! Jesus Christ, look at him! He was my brother. If I thought I could help I would have done something!” Ferocious sparks shot out of Charles O’Malley’s eyes and into Willy’s and neither looked away.

Willy smirked. “You haven’t touched anything?”

The kid shook his head.

“Good,” said Willy. “Wait here.”

Charles O’Malley was right. Peter Rowling of 3403 Powelton Avenue was the victim of a homicide. There was no evidence of a break-in—but this was a frat house so the door was likely to be open. The victim’s body, propped up by extra cushions, was leaned back on a worn out sofa in front of a television set. Moments before his death, he had been eating pork fried rice from a round foil take-out plate, which was now on the floor at his feet. Some rice was still in his mouth, which hung open. Eyes open, too. White plastic fork — not a spork — in his right hand.

There was a horizontal gash through the front third of his neck from which flowed a red river of velvet that collected like a moat around his feet. Despite what had obviously been a violent death, Rowling’s body appeared tranquil, almost as if he were still watching television. Also, a foreign object had been jammed into the front of his neck. It was a piece of hardwood — maybe birch — 12-14 inches long with a handle. It was intricately carved, or rather turned on a lathe. The tapered end had been inserted into the center of the neck wound.

“What the hell is that?” asked Willy.

“That appears to be a magic wand,” I answered.

“Wha…?”

“Not the rabbit in the hat kind. It’s the kind brandished by students at that Harry Potter Wizard school.” Pause. “This one did not come from Toys ‘R Us — it’s a custom job.”

“Hey,” said Willy, who was about to state the obvious. “That the book that was burned by the train tracks?”

Then, simultaneously, we noticed the television. The sound was off, but the picture was on. Dead Peter Rowling was propped up in front of a Harry Potter Movie. In fact, the box from the DVD rental was similarly propped up on the coffee table, as if there were a possibility that we would have missed all the Potter references.

“Yeesh!” said Willy. “What do you think?”

What I thought was that this couldn’t have been The Paginator. Even if the Paginator had moved from canonical fiction to popular fiction, such as King’s and Rowling’s, it was unlikely that he would depart this far from his modus operandi. The Paginator’s previous murders were elegant; burned black though they were, the bodies always appeared neat and intact. Furthermore, the Paginator always struck on the birthday of the author and I am almost certain I saw, on the Today Show, Rowling celebrating her birthday at a lawn party in the heat of July. And most important, I believe the Paginator would have found this crime scene ham-handed and vulgar. His signature was the subtle fragment of a burnt book.

“Come on, Schnoz! What do you think?”

And suddenly, I saw a movie in my mind. In this movie I snapped and grabbed the knot of my partner’s cheap poly blend tie in my left hand and held up my right hand. I extended my first and fourth fingers and pointed them at his eyes like two fat red cocks. And I said “Listen to me you son of a bitch! My name is Joseph Schnall,” and I plunged my fingers into his eyeballs and felt them pop like chocolate cherries. Then, a head butt; watched him go down….

“Schnoz?”

By now, nearly a dozen cops swarmed out front.

“I think we should take Charles O’Malley’s statement.”

We walked out to the stoop. William Phallic talked with Charles O’Malley and I made use of my Chinese pencil.

Fred Siegel is a Teaching Professor and Associate Director of the Freshman Writing Program at Drexel University, where he has taught for 19 years. He is currently at work on “Man of Mystery,” a performance for the upcoming Philadelphia Fringe Festival that will include true stories, magic tricks, and dreams. Also, he is about to celebrate the two year anniversary of his dream blog. Visit http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/category/freds-dreams/.

Click here for Chapter 4 of Turning the Page. Its author is Paula Marantz Cohen.