The Nursery Rhyme Murders

"Sup, bruh?" Tom said cheerfully as he vaulted into a chair in front of Detective Matthew White's desk. Although it was chilly outside on this early November morning, Tom wore only a sweat shirt and shorts with sneakers. His short-cropped, fiery red hair seemed to glow in the fluorescent lighting of the dingy office. He draped thick muscular legs over the arms of the wooden chair.

Detective White, a thirty-something black man with a haggard look on his face, glanced up from his computer in mock annoyance. "This is Detroit, Tom. Speak English."

Tom ignored the jibe, while making his athletic frame somewhat comfortable in the wooden chair. "You said on the phone that you needed to tell me something, so wazzup?"

"You know that fire two days ago, the one the fire department suspected as being arson?" White propped his elbows on his desk, resting his chin in clasped hands.

Tom tilted the chair back, balancing it on the back legs. "Yes, I do," he said as he recalled the story. "And now it has been confirmed to be arson and the body found in the house was murdered." It was a statement, not a question.

White was truly annoyed now. "I shouldn't be surprised that you already knew."

Tom shrugged. "I didn't know until now. But since I'm sitting in the homicide department of the Detroit Police Department, I figured it involved murder." Detective White grimaced, realizing the obvious logic. He tried to hide the embarrassed look on his face in a report that he quickly picked up from his desk.

Tom was clearly aware of White's discomfort and proceeded with malicious glee. "So my question to you, Matt, is do you want me to help or confess?" He straightened the chair so he could lean forward, close to Matt's face. "Which one would annoy you more?"

"Just you being here is annoying enough," Matt found his sense of humor again. "And you are our favorite pyromaniac!" Teasing was fair game, too.

"Pyro-KINETIC!" Tom corrected, as Matt chuckled at his revenge. Tom possessed the ability to create fire in flammable materials and had demonstrated being capable of manipulating the flames. The term was ‘pyrokinesis' and Matt was well aware of the fact, but knew how to push Tom's buttons.

"The victim was shot in the head prior to being placed in the bathtub and set on fire," Matt recited from the report. "The victim, John Nissel, aged 52 was a butcher with a store in Dearborn. He lived close to the airport in Romulus, where he died on Saturday. Here is a statement by his business partner."

"Not much here," Tom said after a few minutes, as he scanned the report that Matthew had handed to him. "The victim was looking forward to retirement by selling the business to a chain of grocery stores."

"The guy didn't have any enemies that we could tell. His business partner certainly didn't know of any," Matt said with a frustrated tone.

"Any indication of robbery or any other motive?"

"None that we can ascertain but it doesn't appear to be a random act of - "

"White!" A shout from across the large office interrupted Matt in mid-sentence. Another detective was holding a phone receiver, covering the mouthpiece with his hand. "We got another fire! This one's in Royal Oak!"

"Another arson?" White shouted back

"They're not sure, but it looks suspicious to the fire crews!" came the answer.

"Tom?" Detective White spun around but Tom had already vanished out the door.

Tom was the only psionic officer other than his Oklahoma colleague Ian that had learned to disguise his telekinesis as the ability to fly. For some reason, emulating Superman was far more acceptable than emulating Jean Grey. Soaring through the skies over Detroit to the northwestern suburb of Royal Oak, Tom never lost the feeling of exhilaration, being high above the earth, with the wind blowing through his hair. His excitement quickly sobered as he saw a column of thick black smoke rising above the urban sprawl, like a harbinger of death and destruction.

The fire crews were spraying water into windows and front door, but had not been able to penetrate the fire and smoke coming out the threshold.

Another aspect of Tom's pyrokinesis was his ability to protect himself from flame and heat by wrapping the power around him in a protective cocoon. It kept him safe from the danger and allowed him to breathe normally without inhaling smoke. It did not enable him to see through it.

Fortunately, the smoke wasn't as thick inside when Tom burst through the doorway into the front room, which appeared to be a living area or den. Nearly everything was on fire. Tom scanned the room quickly but thankfully saw no one trapped in the hellish environment. A downside to using his psionic abilities in this manner meant that his telepathy and clairvoyance were completely subdued. If there was anyone alive in the house, Tom would have to find them by the old-fashioned way, searching room to room.

Two firemen entered the house behind Tom. He motioned for them to search the ground floor, while he moved toward a staircase leading to the second story. He dodged burning furniture and carpeting to reach the stairs. The first two steps were smoldering and a thin trail of flame climbed the stairs, like a long, flaming serpent.

Confirmation that this is arson, Tom thought. Whoever set the place on fire poured a stream of inflammable liquid as an accelerant down the stairs before lighting it. It is a good thing that this portion of the carpet hasn't caught fire, yet.

He leapt over the first two steps and raced up the stairs. As he gained the landing, he turned around looking back at the bottom steps on fire. Something clicked in his mind about that scene but he could not remember what was alerting him. The thin trail of flame continued down a corridor and entered a room near the top of the stairs.

Tom dashed in and stopped short at the horrific sight. It was a bathroom, engulfed in flames. In the tub, blazing fiercely was a human body.

Tom closed his eyes and pushed hard with his power. The flames in the room diminished rapidly then extinguished altogether. He called out the door to the firemen below, and then turned to the still smoking body. It grinned hideously at Tom from blackened crusted lips that had pulled back from the heat to show a gruesome smile.

As he stepped closer, his sneaker bumped something on the floor that he hadn't noticed before. It appeared to be a small book, but it was badly burned. Tom squatted down and turned it over very carefully. It was a book of nursery rhymes.

Curious, he thought, since the body in the tub seemed to be an adult.

The two firemen entered the room.

"Looks like the same m.o. as the other one," he said. The firemen stepped forward while Tom moved back to give them room to do their work.

Just then he felt a change in the fire outside the room. The inkling of the thought he had earlier coming up the stairs burst through his consciousness with sudden clarity. The trench effect! When fire is contained in a staircase with solid sides, such as the one in this house, a trench is formed. The flame begins a slow creep up the stairs but the ‘trench' keeps the heat channeled as it rises. The upper steps become superheated until they ignite, usually in the same instant. The result was an eruption, sending fire rushing up the steps and engulfing the area at the top, with a blowtorch-like ferocity.

"Shit!" Tom shouted. The firemen swung around as he yelled. Fire exploded through the corridor, expanding into rooms. Tom reacted just in time, raising a telekinetic field, protecting the firemen and him from the sudden inferno.

"Gotta blast!" Tom shouted as he grabbed the firemen around their waists and threw himself and his human cargo out the window above the tub and its grisly contents. The glass shattered loudly as the human phalanx burst through the window into the blessedly cool air outside. Tom lowered the firemen gently to the ground, as his psionic abilities finally gave out. The expenditure of flying across the city, extinguishing the flames and saving the firemen had left him drained and light-headed. The dizziness made him collapse on the ground. There was nothing much left for him to do anyway. There was no hope for the poor soul in the tub and the Royal Oak Fire Department would soon have the fire under control.

Hours later, the fire had been completely extinguished and the dead person identified as Kelly Allen, in his late forties and the owner of ‘Sweet Beginnings', a specialty wedding cake designer and creator. Allen's domestic partner had been located and contacted about the tragedy. The devastated partner, Ronnie James, had returned to the ruins of his home. As the shock wore off, Ronnie was able to talk to Tom and Detective White, who had arrived shortly after Tom had rescued the firemen.

Ronnie James told them that he and Kelly had been life partners for over 10 years, and they worked together in the wedding cake business from humble beginnings in a neighborhood bakery to become a high-end supplier of elaborate cakes to wealthy patrons.

"Did he have any children?" Tom asked as gently as he could.

The question seemed to surprise Ronnie. "No."

"Any nieces or nephews?" Tom pressed.

"None that he has contact with. He has two nieces and three nephews but they are grown and live on the east coast. They never come to visit." Ronnie choked back another surge of weeping.

Detective White looked at Tom with askance.

"Then why did he have a book of nursery rhymes in the bathroom with him?" Tom queried White, who shook his head, looking down at a notepad he carried with him to take notes.

Suddenly White's head snapped up. "I remember that a book was found next to the first body of the butcher in Romulus. It had almost been completely burned but some of the pages had very small areas in tact that suggested it was a book of nursery rhymes!" White whispered excitedly.

Tom stated that he wanted to take a look at that book, too. They turned back to Mr. James, who had managed to suppress his tears for the moment.

"One other thing, sirs," he said hoarsely. "I think Kelly was having an affair. I have no idea who it was. I've suspected him for sometime to be stepping out but didn't have any real proof." He paused to sniff. "Do you think this might be connected to the other person?"

Tom noted a slight sneer in Ronnie's voice as he asked the question. "We don't know, Mr. James. But we'll find out."

"Matt, I remember reading something in that report in the Nissel file that his business partner said that Nissel had been seeing someone but didn't know who she was."

"Yeah?"

"Did you get any idea if the person Nissel was seeing was actually a woman or could it have been a man?"

"His business partner intimated that it was a woman but said he didn't know anything about her. He made it a point to say that Nissel wasn't gay," White replied, still unsure of where Tom's logic was heading.

"I thought there might be a connection, but I suppose I'm wrong," Tom said, wearily. "Let's take a look at that book from the Romulus fire."

Back at the police station, Matthew retrieved the book from the evidence locker. It had been fried into a stiff mass of burned paper and cardboard, permanently fused open. Further, it had been doused with water so the remaining few pages were warped. Tom looked at the pages where the book was forever bookmarked. Only a small portion of the right page at the bottom near the spine was unsigned. Despite the smoke and water damage, bright colors leapt off the page at Tom. A rare smile in such a tragic circumstance.

Only one word was visible: ‘knaves'

Tom remembered that the book found in the Royal Oak fire had been opened to a certain nursery rhyme.

Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub,
And who do you think they be?
The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,
Turn them out, knaves all three.


"I think I've found a connection between the two murders," Tom said quietly. "The victim in Romulus was a butcher and this afternoon in Royal Oak, the victim was a baker."

"Well, that's just great!" White yelled sarcastically. "Now all we have to do is just tell all the candlestick makers in the greater Detroit area to be on alert for someone with a fixation with nursery rhymes! Is that what you want us to do?"

Tom knew that White had been under extreme stress since the second fire and did not take offense at his outburst. "I'm just saying that it appears we have a connection, even though we're still not sure what it is. I don't think this is some madman, knocking off people that resemble nursery rhyme characters. I think there is something concrete between these two men. We need to find it."

Detective White had calmed down during Tom's quiet speech, and ran a hand through his unkempt black hair. "I'm sorry, Tom," he said with a tired sigh. "We'll start looking into this right away."

"In the meantime, maybe I can figure out who the next victim will be," Tom replied hopefully. His clairvoyance was nowhere near as powerful as his telekinesis but it gave White a reason to be optimistic.

The next day, Tom walked into the police station and greeted Matthew White, who looked like he had not slept a wink. "The autopsy has confirmed the baker's death as being the same method as the butcher's. Shot in the head before the body was dumped into the bathtub and set on fire. Fortunately, the bullets retrieved from the skulls of the victims were not completely damaged and ballistics has confirmed that they were fired from the same gun."

"At least you have something. I googled ‘candlestick maker' and there aren't a whole lot of them in the Detroit area. In fact, there are none. Zero. Zip. Nada. Not even in the entire state of Michigan, the Upper Peninsula included." Tom felt his earlier vim ebb quickly as he slumped down in the chair in front of White's desk.

"So you think that this nursery rhyme connection is a crock?" White asked.

"I don't know," Tom said wearily, as he made a short gesture toward the coffee pot across the room. The pot rose silently from the burner plate and poured the steaming black liquid into a Styrofoam cup sitting next to it. When the cup was full, the pot sat back down in its place and the cup floated across the room into Tom's outstretched hand. White watched the process without any surprise or awe. He had seen it too many times already and right now, he was just too tired to give a crap. "Have you found any other connection between the two victims?"

"Nothing. So far as we can tell their paths never crossed. We thought about catering or any other food service where a butcher and a baker could come in contact but haven't found anything," White concluded with another sigh. "We haven't found the woman that the butcher was seeing, nor can we find anyone who KNOWS anything about her. She's just a mysterious Ms. X. Ronnie James can't give us any information on the guy the baker was stepping out with. He still claims that he only had a suspicion that Allen was cheating on him." White rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to relieve some frustration and wake up.

In the same fashion as before, Tom poured White a cup of coffee. "I feel that the butcher's business partner was hiding something, but I don't know what. It was during the part of the interview when he was telling me about Nissel and him selling the business to a large grocery chain."

Just then, a tall thin man in his fifties, with thinning hair combed over a bald pate in a futile attempt to camouflage the wide span of flesh on his crown, approached the detective's desk. He greeted Detective White with a nervous smile.

"Hello, Mr. Giovanni," White shook the man's hand. "Tom, this is Carl Giovanni, Mr. Nissel's business partner."

Tom exchanged handshakes with new arrival, introducing himself as part of the homicide division, since Giovanni didn't seem to recognize him. Tom's features were frequently splayed across the state's numerous papers, but still it seemed that he was not easily identified.

All the better, Tom thought.

"Thank you for coming in, Mr. Giovanni," White said politely, settling back into his chair. "We were hoping that you could shed some more light on the murder of your partner."

Tom pulled a chair over, physically instead of his usual show of telekinetic ability, for Giovanni to sit in.

"There's not much more that I can tell you, detective." Giovanni started. "Just that John and I were looking forward to selling our business to the grocery chain, because we could retire quite comfortably. I don't know why someone would want to kill him like this. Just a madman I suppose."

"Have you learned anything more about this woman he was seeing?" White was already starting to see that this might be a waste of time.

Giovanni merely shook his head sadly. "Has there been anything on that book of nursery rhymes found next to the tub?"

It was White's turn to shake his head. As they continued their conversation, Tom sat back and studied an enormous map of the Detroit area on the wall behind Detective White. Colored pins and labels from old and new cases hung on the map, creating a crude mosaic effect. Two of the newer pins, which indicated the addresses of the two arson/murders, were on opposite sides of the city.

As he focused on the map, Tom turned his thoughts back to the mystery. Two men, in similar industries in the same area, had no apparent contact. The only connection between them was their vocations matching those of the nursery rhyme. In the children's poem, all three men were in the tub at the same time, so why were these men separated? Most likely, getting all his victims into one tub would be a logistic nightmare, Tom thought.

Was it really a madman? If so, would he continue his rampage through the whole book?

Tom slowly scanned the map with his clairvoyance, searching it both physically and psychically. He eyes came to rest on Grosse Point, a posh community on the shores of Lake St. Clair. Somehow, the point on the map felt hot, as he focused on it. The colored area of the township, next to the light blue of the lake, suddenly burst into flame, consuming the map in a slow-motion recreation of the opening of ‘Bonanza'.

"Tom?" Detective White's voice was calm but urgent, piercing Tom's consciousness. He had a curious but concerned look on his face.

Tom blinked in surprise at being pulled out of his concentration. He snapped his attention back to the map, but it was intact. No sign of fire at all. The flames he had seen were a manifestation of his clairvoyance.

"It's Grosse Point. That's where the next fire will be," Tom said breathlessly, still recovering from the vision.

Carl Giovanni looked at him with surprise, but Detective White knew better than to question Tom. Without explaining further, Tom flew out of the office. Outside the police station, he took an enormous leap, another way of disguising telekinesis, and landed on the roof of the four-story building. From this vantage point, Tom scanned the skies to the northwest. He saw nothing at first, until he rose in the air. A black cloud was low on the horizon, just rising above the house tops, a stark contrast to the sparkling surface of Lake St. Clair beyond.

Tom returned to the roof, where he could not be seen from the ground or from the surrounding buildings, and teleported to the scene of the smoke. It was not a long distance and Tom did not have to expend much psionic power to make the jump.

He materialized in front of an enormous house on Lake Shore Drive, just as sirens became audible in the distance. Flames were already billowing out of the first floor windows, pouring black smoke into the sky like an enormous chimney. The short teleport from the police station had not depleted his power, so Tom felt invigorated. He gestured toward the front door, which instantly splintered and disappeared, allowing more flames and smoke to belch outward from the empty threshold, hungry for the cool air and its oxygen richness.

The scene in the front room was a chilling reminder of the fire in Royal Oak the previous day. Flames burned everywhere, consuming furniture and prized possessions. The luxuriousness of the mansion was quickly being destroyed by fire and smoke.

Tom pushed hard with his power. The fire, which had flared up from feeding on the fresh air, obeyed his command and subsided. Flames withdrew from the windows, leaving black smoke, although diminished as well, pouring from the openings.

As fire trucks screeched to a halt in front of the house, Tom stepped through front door. The rooms beyond the front where he was standing were still aflame. More spacious and lavishly decorated spaces were engulfed in fire, giving the scene a look of hell. Feeling slightly dizzy from the previous psionic expenditure, Mark took a deep breath and commanded the fire to quench. The inside fires showed more reluctance than the first, but soon lessened and finally went out.

Firemen rushed through the door with fire hoses ready. Tom motioned for them to stop.

"The water will destroy as much evidence as the fire has!" He shouted.

Seeing that the fire was under control, the captain of the firemen, who was the first one through the door, nodded in understanding. The flames on the first floor had been extinguished, but smoldering furnishings, carpeting and draperies could re-ignite any at any second, but the firemen were there to stop any flare-ups.

Tom turned back toward the rest of the house, and spied a wide staircase in a corridor. As yesterday, there was a thin line of flame up the stairs. With a quick telepathic nudge to the firemen, Tom raced up the steps, knowing that the firemen would prevent another trench effect from turning the top floors into a raging inferno.

The scene on the upper landing was too familiar, as the trail of flame led into a bathroom, with a burning body in the bathtub. Summoning his power again, he forced the flames into submission and forced them to extinguish. He felt the fire throughout the house coming under control at last.

Tom slumped wearily against an elegantly tiled counter with two sinks that had not been damaged by the fire. He was exhausted from using his power and the dizziness had increased to the point it was difficult to stand. Tom shoved the grogginess from his mind, trying to remain alert to any sudden re-ignitions that could occur.

He scanned the huge bathroom. A small book, still smoking, lay on the floor next to the tub. Tom didn't need to turn it over to see if it was the same one that had been found in the previous two murders. He could ‘see' the contents, and realized that it was open to the ‘Three Men in a Tub' rhyme.

What hadn't been at the first two was an additional item on the floor. Twelve inches away laid a revolver surprisingly untouched by flames.

An hour later, the Michigan State Bureau of Investigation was in the process of scouring the mansion for clues. Detective White found Tom sitting in the back of an ambulance, head in his hands, trying to relieve his headache and regain his powers.

"This one, Ralph Harding, was our candlestick maker," he said placidly. Tom looked up in surprise.

"I didn't see anything that would indicate this is a candlestick maker's house," Tom gestured toward the big structure. "I guess candlestick making is a lucrative business."

White shook his head. "Apparently it was a hobby of Mr. Harding's. We found a workshop behind the house, and it seems he discovered a great way to pass retirement."

A MSBI agent stepped to White's side and held up a plastic evidence bag to show him the revolver that had been found next to the body. "We also found a crude time-delay device in the house. It was nearly destroyed, but Tom put out the fires before that happened." The agent nodded in appreciation toward Tom, who smiled in return, then put his head back into his hands. The agent continued talking to White. "It gave the murderer a big head start so he could be miles away before the fire was noticed."

Tom jerked up his head, sending a stab of pain through his brain as he did. "It gave him enough time to establish an alibi," he said as clues began to form a clearer picture. "And what better alibi than to be sitting with the detective on the case at the exact moment the call came in!"

The agent and the detective looked at Tom with puzzled looks on their faces. Tom jumped out of the ambulance to the ground. "You'll find Carl Giovanni's fingerprints on that," he said, pointing to the bagged pistol.

White held up his hands in confusion and frustration. "Whoa! Whoa! Back up!" he shouted. "Are you saying that Giovanni came into the police station just so we could help him establish an alibi? He killed his partner, the baker and now this guy?"

Tom squared his shoulders, blinking the weariness from his eyes. "I wondered why he came into the station today. At first, I took it for face value, like he said, just wanting to know if there had been any developments in the case against his partner. Simple and straight-forward enough. But then he asked about the book of nursery rhymes, and that didn't hit me until just now. We didn't even know about that book until yesterday when we compared it with the one we found at Allen's murder."

He had White's full attention and the agent's as well. "When you mentioned the time-delay device, that's when it all clicked. He set the fuse, then came to see us. He hoped that the fire would destroy his fingerprints on the revolver, but left it there to indicate that this series of murders was over."

"What was his motive for the killings then?" White had not heard anything that shed light on the remaining mystery.

"I hope that we can find the answers within Mr. Harding's house," Tom shoved his hands into his pockets, praying that he had quenched the fire in time to preserve any clues.

The next morning after a refreshing and reinvigorating sleep, Tom returned to Detective White's desk.

"Bingo," White said with quiet triumph. "You were right about Giovanni. His fingerprints were all over the revolver and the nursery rhyme book!"

"Did you find a motive?" Tom was too anxious to listen to the information that he already knew.

"He actually had several, and we found evidence to all in Harding's study," White began. "You were also right about Nissel. Guess who his secret paramour was."

"Kelly Allen." Tom said, slightly annoyed at the obvious answer.

Detective White did not think it was so clear-cut. He gave Tom a hard look. "It must be hard to throw surprise birthday parties for you," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"You said I was right about Nissel," Tom sighed. "That means his secret love was a man. Since Nissel and Allen both had a mysterious unknown lover, there was a good chance that the murders were connected by some means other than the m.o." He waited as the logic caught up with White. "I still don't know what Harding, the candlestick maker, had to do with all of this."

"Harding apparently had found out about Nissel and Allen," White was excited that he did have some information that Tom did not already know. "Harding's hobby of candlestick making got him the attention of a family in the Grosse Point communities. They contracted him to make special candlesticks for a daughter's wedding. A wedding that Allen made the cake and Nissel supplied the meals. Harding wrote down everything that he saw. It became apparent to him that Allen and Nissel were more than just the usual caterers, and Harding realized they were lovers. He was blackmailing Nissel, who stood to lose a lot of business if he were outed."

"What did that have to do with Giovanni?" Tom asked.

"Harding was blackmailing both of them, intimating they were lovers. None of this would have bothered Allen since he was openly gay and no one gave it a second thought in his community. But for Nissel and Giovanni, it was entirely different. That area of the city isn't quite as forgiving as Royal Oak or Grosse Point." White paused for effect. "Also, Giovanni lied about Nissel looking forward to selling out and retiring. He didn't WANT to sell to the grocery chain. He was happy working and had no plans of retiring. Giovanni wanted to sell, but Nissel refused."

Tom was keeping up. "So he murdered Nissel because he wouldn't sell out to the grocery chain, cheating Giovanni out of lots and lots of money. He murdered Harding because he was blackmailing them and potentially ruining their business and their chances of selling out. He murdered Allen because he was the one whose affair with Nissel precipitated all these events."

"Harding's notes and journal would have been consumed in the fire if you hadn't managed to put it out," White said, suddenly serious and genuinely appreciative.

"I guess Giovanni got cocky," Tom said. "He figured that the nursery rhymes would be the only connection between all three men, since we didn't know until yesterday. Why didn't he destroy the notes and stuff first?"

"I don't think Giovanni knew that Harding had all that. He knew that Giovanni knew, but Harding had all of it well hidden," White mused. "Giovanni may have searched for it, and since he didn't find it, he figured torching the house would take care of any evidence."

"He didn't expect a pyromaniac to become involved," Tom winked at White with a little smugness thrown in for a jibe.