Focussing On Hire Things

Things had been going well. Actually, that's an understatement. After solving the Cheese Murder Mystery and unravelling the LARP conundrum, business went through the roof. My name was passed through forums and steady work referred from the precinct had had a healthy impact on my bank account. I had decided it was time to get someone in who could organise my schedule better, handle my enquiries, and generally free me up to be the dynamic investigator that I advertised I was.
If they happened to provide similar additional services as Bill Clinton's employees, then so much the better.

That was eight weeks ago. Eight long, long weeks.

I'd hired Nina. She was some sort of generic Asian- I don't keep up with the latest models- and I figured that as a worst-case-scenario, I'd at least get access to a cheap fried rice recipe. She also made two very good points during the interview, probably because the air conditioning was on too high and the top she was wearing was far too tight.
Upon taking note of these two points- well rounded points at that- a white noise had filled my ears and I hadn't really heard anything in response to my interview questions. Frankly, I'm not 100% certain my gaze was raised above neckline level for the duration of the interview. She'd given me a copy of her resume and it was only three weeks after I hired her that I went back to review it and realised it was written in crayon.

By that point, it was getting too late. I couldn't quite put my finger on the problem. On one hand, she was as dense as a neutron star and I'd passed gas that had more initiative than her. On the other hand, or in two hands, or possibly burying my face between and making motorboat noises, were her other qualities.

The first sign of trouble was when I had asked her to copy a file and found her at the machine half an hour later feeding the 30th ream of paper into the machine because "you didn't tell me how many copies." The second was when I arranged to meet her at an Indian restaurant downtown to pass on some file information to save having to travel all the way back to the office and back out again. After she was an hour late, I found her outside still pulling at the door ineffectually and claiming it was broken because she thought the sign that said "Push" was a traditional Indian word meaning "restaurant".

This was somewhat offset by her propensity to wear low-cut shirts with push-up bras, and I had to privately speculate what kind of aeorodynamic tension-load engineers had worked out how to push that much up without the supporting garment exploding under the strain like the Hulk's stripper cousin. Whatever material they had used must have some kind of industrial application in suspension bridges.
If she turned suddenly they moved hypnotically, like a lava lamp or a water bed that had just had a medicine ball dropped on it, the lingerie creaking and creating a yawning abyss of cleavage which had given me pause to speculate whether yelling "HELLO!" into them would be followed by a lengthy echo.
One day I'd gone in to find out why she'd paid an invoice from "Mr Squiggle" for "Handwriting Lessons" and she'd turned suddenly and the white noise had rushed to my ears and suddenly I'd realised it was five hours later and she'd gone home and I was still there.

But the final straw came when I switched on the office computer to find that she'd used the desktop area as a dumping ground and I decided to move them into a single folder, on the desktop, marked "New Folder". The next day I had come in to the office to start work on a new case involving a jealous wife, a soon-to-be-ex-husband, and beauty pageant contestant evidently named "Cinnamon Buns" but whose birth certificate read "George Williams", to find her in a panic.
"All my stuff is gone!" she had exclaimed.
"No, it's in a folder on the desktop," I replied. "It was the only folder left on the desktop. And was called 'New Folder'."
"Oh, that? I thought some virus had deleted my stuff and made that folder, so I deleted it."
For once, I was speechless and not from gazing below her neckline.
"Wait, there was only one folder on the desktop, and rather than look in it to see what was in it, you deleted it?"
"And emptied the trash to make sure," she said proudly. "No virus is getting past me!"
"Nina, what were all those files?"
"Ummmm... nothing important, I don't think. Just some templates. And some music."
"Oh, good."
"And the tax and accounting information. Oh, and all your invoices. And those surveillance photos you said the newspapers were coming to get this afternoon for half a mil. What is half a mil anyway, is that like a metric reference?"
My blood froze.
"Why wouldn't you look in the folder before you deleted it?" I'd half screeched, half shouted.
"Because I didn't make it and if I didn't, who else could?"
"Who else works in this office, Nina? Whose name is on the door?"
"I've seen the door. It says Tunk and then something in Russian underneath."
"You're reading it from the wrong side of the glass, Nina."
"Oooooooooooooooh. Is it you? You work here, right?"
"Yes. I work here too."
"Cool. Do I get a prize?"
"That depends if you think 'redundancy' is a prize."
"Isn't he an R&B artist?"
"So you saw a change and you didn't call me? Or ask me when I came in?"
"Well, I was pretty sure a virus did it. I'm Asian and we're good with computers."
"Viruses don't make consolidated folders, Nina."
She arched her back, put her arms up in the air, and stretched out. "Oh. But I should be at lunch now anyway, so can you be a gem and change it back to how it was before while I'm out?" she said.
I seethed. I raged. I screamed "NINA, there are kindergarteners who are more functionally capable than you are on a standard day. The only difference between you and a mentally challenged Golden Retriever is that the dog can be housebroken! You're fired!"
Unfortunately, it was at that point that I realised that it was now 10pm and she'd gone home hours before and I was still standing in the same spot where she'd reached up to stretch at midday.

I managed to recover the files, but I never managed to fire Nina. By the time my brain could overtake my libido, it was always too late. I guess the old saying was true. God gave man two heads, but only enough blood to think with one of them at a time.

Let The Dice Roll- Part 2 of 2

The white plastic cubes were flung across the table, and all the nerdy occupants drew their collective breaths in anticipation. The first ceased rolling- a six. The second spun on a corner, and looked like it was going to be a one, but teetered and came down again- a six. The third had too much momentum, and continued rolling right to the edge of the table. It looked like it was about to fall to the floor, but its progress arrested suddenly and it flicked back with six back dots pointing up to the ceiling.
All sixes. A collective sigh was let out and one person took up applause which led the rest of the group to join in. My opponent glowered at me.
"The Blade of Serenity pierces your battle mesh," the Dungeon Master intoned, "but is turned aside as it glances off your Compendium of Secrets, kept in a pocket above your chest."
"You mean like a notepad?" I queried.
"Yes, like a notepad."
"The kind a detective would have?"
"No. You wrest the blade from Mysterius' hand and push him against the wall, his own weapon now pointed at his throat. Mysterius loses 10 armour points and drops the Gauntlets of Extreme Gauntlet-ness."
"Who comes up with these names?" I asked.
"The Gauntlets of Extreme Gauntlet-ness have been passed down from father to son for a thousand generations."
"And in doing so, obtained the power of...?"
"Gauntlet."
"Ah."
"-Ness. Now, your leperous guide sits in awe, his one good hand frozen in fear at the display of your battle prowess. You beaten foe agrees to answer your questions. And you ask-"
I interrupted here. It was time to earn my payday.
"I ask him: last week a clan of hobbits came through this part of the town. Frodo Gamje, the love-child of Frodo and Samwise and a Level 60 Hobbit with a plus 15 enchantment on his sword and a negative 50 enchantment on his dating life, was amongst them. You challenged him to single combat and won."
"What?" said the Dungeon Master. "How do you know about this?"
"Shush," I responded, "I was talking to Mysterius. Now answer, or I'll roll to see if I get to pluck your eye out, stick it in the sky, and make it live above some stupid volcano until some midget comes, likes the lava, and puts a ring on it."
"It was fair combat!" Mysterius replied. "It's not my fault if Frodo always begins with the same attack!"
"I guess it's Hobbitual," I replied, "but that doesn't concern me. Your unexpected string of good fortune, however, does."
"I rolled those numbers fair and square!" he replied indignantly. I looked at him long and hard.
"You did, did you?" I asked. "Is that your final answer?"
"What are you saying?" asked the Dungeon Master indignantly. "Are you implying there is some impropriety in this noble battle? I have been Dungeon Master since Time Immemorial-"
"You've been Dungeon Master for four weeks," I replied shortly. "Now I'm going to put on my magical detecting cloak of I-Can-Have-Sex-With-Actual-Women which has infinity Answer-Me-Or-I'll-Punch-You-Right-In-The-Nose points and get to the bottom of this. Mysterius' unnatural run of luck destroyed Frodo after rolling three consecutive triple-sixes. Dungeon Master, what do you say about this?"
"Well, of course I was suspicious," he replied hastily, "but we let the dice roll, the laws of chance decide and we abide by its outcome. That's the rule we've always had."
"Ah, the dice," I replied. "And yet no-one thought it odd that the third die which was about to fall off the table stopped so abruptly. Dungeon Master, I've done some digging. Lord Englewood who by day is Phil From Tech Support also has a third life, does he not, as a children's entertainer and amateur magician, The Amazing Horatio?"
"Well," he said, drawing himself up, "I like to give back to the community-"
"Indeed. An admirable pursuit no doubt. I would like to shake you by the hand in recognition of your civic-mindedness."
Warily, he extended his be-robed hand, mysterious and arcane symbols drawn around the cuffs of the sleeves. I shook it, grabbed it at the wrist, and flicked a small pocket in the cuff whose stitching was almost unnoticeable to the naked eye, except to those who were looking for it. Three dice fell to the table. I rolled the existing dice again- they came up all sixes.

"Now, Lord Englewood, I will tell you what I know, and you will tell me why. You conspired to use your sleight-of-hand skills to swap the dice on a number of occasions. By prior arrangement with Mysterius, you ended Frodo Gamje's young life after three year's development by Eugine Finkelstein, who describes himself as 'Frodo's avatar in this world.'"
"Fine!" the Dungeon Master replied, "I switched the dice! I'm glad this is out in the open, finally! It's about my son! He killed my son!"
The room went silent. I froze. Had I stepped into something beyond me? Was I backing the wrong horse? Wait a second- when had this guy even spoken to a woman who wasn't clad in green and wearing elvish ears?
"What son?" I asked suspiciously.
"Lord Englewood II, the son of Lord Englewood I, who died at the hands of Frodo Gamje when he was dropped from a precipice while scaling the Mountains of Infinite Peril!"
I paused for a second. Breathed in deeply. Breathed out.
"I just want to get this straight," I said, "you cheated by switching dice to destroy a guy's character because his character killed your imaginary son- inside a game you completely control?"
"Yes! But he dropped him!"
"In a story you made up?!?"
"It needed narrative tension! A defining tragedy! But then I couldn't forget or forgive him!"
"So you're blaming him for an event you scripted because your imaginary character feels betrayed by his failure- that you wrote- and so now he needs to make a new character and begin from the very first level?"
"Yes!"
"And for that, I've been paid $15,000 and had to spend six weeks undercover?"
"What?"
"You know what? That's enough. Lord Englewood, I hereby deduct a million I-Have-A-Point-On-This-Planet points, which earns you this-" and here I punched him squarely in the nose, and as he lay recumbent on the ground continued "-and I will take this evidence to my client so that he knows he was cheated and can resurrect his character." I turned to the room in general, and said "you are all witnesses to this admission. If I have to come back here, so help me, I'm going to just set a fire near the doorway and let nature take care of the rest."

I stood up. The Dungeon Master shuffled backwards hastily from his position on the floor to get out of my way. I removed my false ears, bundled them up in my cloak, and dropped them on the floor by the door. In the vacuous silence of the room, the creak of the hinges as they opened seemed cacophonous. I stepped forward meaningfully, turned, and slammed the door to make a point. I pulled a small recording device out of my pocket, removed the memory card, took out my phone, and called my client.
"Sir? It's Knut Tortenheimel. Yes, I have the evidence you wanted. No, it wasn't hard to get the admission. Yes, your character can be revived, the room and the players are witnesses but I have a memory card confirming the dice were loaded. A bonus? $20k total? That's very kind of you. I'll drop the file off on the way. You have my bank details. It's been a pleasure doing business with you."

I hung up the phone, and paused to reflect on the bizarre world that I had been involved in. I couldn't imagine how people could devote so much time and energy on such a worthless, socially isolating, imaginary pursuit. Still, the bonus was going to be worth it.
I could finally put a deposit down on that 1971 Malibu Barbie I'd had my eye on, the last prize in my collection. Three hundred and twenty-two dolls in mint condition. I couldn't wait to tell the other dozen people on the Barbie message boards. Now that was a man's hobby.

Let The Dice Roll- Part 1 of 2

It all came down to this. A roll of the dice. One deft flick of the wrist. I had to keep my cool- if they had suspected that I was undercover, well, let's just say it could go very badly for me very quickly.

I wrapped my cloak around myself temporarily, not as much to keep out the chill as to suppress shiver of nervousness. My opponent in this game had many more years experience, and his eyes betrayed nothing. But experience can count for little, when luck has a casting vote, and I had luck in spades.

Undercover work is a challenge. For a start, it's expensive for a client- you need to be able to insinuate yourself into your target group; not look too desperate, but also not appear too interested. The lingo, the pop culture references that apply, the clothing, the body gestures, and hangout scenes, all these things have to become second nature. At the same time, you had to try not to get drawn so far into the scene that there was no returning. All that takes time, and time is money.

In this case, I was in a clandestine world few were even aware of. A tense dungeon of mystery, inhabited by supplicants for whom each decision could mean life or death. I was completely surrounded by virgins, and not the blow-yourself-up-and-get-seventy-two-of-them kind, no; more the saving-myself-for-Princess-Leia kind of virgins.
This was the world of LARP- Live Action Role Play, and I had managed to merge seamlessly into their midst by issuing the time-honoured secret code, "Where Are We At Tonight?" to which the appropriate secret counter-response was given, "Dave's Place At Half Seven, Bring Snacks To Share". Around the room I could see four hobbits (merkins glued to their feet), three elves (fake ears and all), a dwarf, two reavers, someone designating themselves as a wraith who had draped a large back sheet over their heads with two eye holes cut out, and one person who had just written "troll" on his t-shirt with a Sharpie. They were a dermatologist's dream, each face a menagerie of skin issues that tend to crop up when you consider Coca Cola to be a "magic potion", except for the wraith, whose choice of costume was possibly in fact a social grace to spare us the horrors underneath.

Lord Englewood, better known as Phil From Tech Support, was an interesting guy at least. He had worked his way up the be the current Dungeon Master by sheer ambition, one roll of the dice at the time. A risk-taker and ambitious warrior who presently lived in his parents' basement "so that I can have the time to focus on maximising my Druid's potential", as he put it, he wove tales of mystery and intrigue and was the keeper of all the group's collective knowledge, although after fifteen minutes amongst them, I was pretty certain that the collective knowledge wouldn't fill a four-page notepad. "Showers", for example, was a mystery deeper than the origins of Mordor.

My opponent was a veteran mage with forty years' experience. By the way he had said it, it was apparently something to be intimidated by, and being undercover, falling on the ground laughing would have been unprofessional. I had, however, mentally substituted "experience" with "of being completely alone"; he had apparently subsisted on diet of Doritos and salsa for at least thirty of those years, his patchy beard turned almost to random dreadlocks with the crust of hydrogenated fats, cheese flavouring and MSG. He had indicated that the beard was a point of pride, akin to the warriors of old whose own facial hair had been crusted with the blood and tears of their departed enemies, and I had refrained from pointing out that the warriors of old wouldn't use a motorised scooter to move between the kitchen and the fridge because "walking that made them out of breath."

The Dungeon Master had said "You are a seeker of truth, and unraveller of mysteries, a chaser of enigmas, an unpicker of the the tapestry of lies in which our tale is set."
"You mean, I'm, like, a detective?"
"No! Nothing so urbane, weary traveller."
"'Cos it sounds like I'm a detective."
"No! You slave at the crucible of conundrums, refining the ore of misinformation and discovering truths within truths, wherein, this fateful night, we find our tale."
"Pretty certain you just described a detective."
"Silence! There are no detectives in Middle Earth!"
"Are there cops?"
"No!"
"Banks?"
"No!"
"Robbers?"
"N- actually, yes, there are robbers. Thieves, I should say. Thieves."
"Who punishes the robbers?"
"An assembly of the local guards who work for the king defend the honour of the realm and are tasked with restraining these miscreants."
"What did they steal?"
"Well, Stroemfeld the Invincible over there- no, the one drinking the Red Bull in the red shirt- once stole the fabled Eye of the Unseeing Eye from the cave of Arin'Tune, and was celebrated in story song throughout the land henceforth."
"Shoulda put it in a bank. Then the cops coulda protected it."
"Silence. You, weary traveller, have reached the battered gates of the small trading town Leper's Leap, out beyond the Desert of Unbidden Dreams."
"What's in the town?"
"Lepers. Anyway-"
"Wait, why am I going into a town if it's filled with lepers?"
"You're going in to solve a mystery!"
"What, like a detective?"
"Ye- no! Anyway, as you walk the wretched streets of this city, you meet a man with no hands."
"Probably wants a hand-out."
"SILENCE! This man is Jerra, the great master builder of the Temple of The Seventh Sun."
"Not much of a handy-man any more, is he? What's he do, hammer the wood with his forehead?"
"Shut up! Now, Jerra takes you to the local tavern for some mead, and introduces you to Mysterius, Arch-Mage of the Ninth Realm and Keeper of the Book of Mysteries- that's Jason, to your left-"
"But his 'Book of Mysteries' is a Playdude with 'BoM' written over the top of the magazine title."
"It's the Book of Mysteries! Do not sully its forbidden knowledge, knowlessman! Mysterius sees through your clever disguise and recognises in you an opponent most artful. He says he will not answer any question you raise until you defeat him in mighty challenge! Will you accept?"
"Well, I've been told you insert Part A into Part B and C what happens-"
"Will. You. Accept."
I breathed in. Breathed out.
"Fine."
The dice in a cup had been passed to a smug Mysterius, who had then rolled three fives for his first attack. Apparently his "armour level" meant that unless I rolled a perfect three sixes- the perfect attack, I would not penetrate his "battle mesh" and his "Blade of Serenity" would basically strip my immortal soul and turn it into a pizza delivery man or something. It wasn't important. What was important was answers, and I wouldn't start getting answers until I won this battle.

I scooped up the dice carefully. Put my hand over the cup as I shook. Breathed in deeply. And threw.

The Cheese Murder Mystery CONCLUSION (ie. Part IV)- de-motive-ation

If you're going to define cowardice as turning and running at the first sign of an impending catastrophe, failing to take any accountability, and attempting to cover or deny any involvement in the act or event, then yes, I suppose you could call me a coward. In my defence, I had just stabbed a man, and since that man wasn't Justin Bieber, it was unlikely I was going to be given a parade for my contribution to society.
Also, what is the go with Justin Bieber? It's like they shaved Miley's back hair and made a person out of it, then recorded her singing, pitched it up an octave, and made a teen idol out of it.

Anyway, there I was. A stunned look of pained surprise on the part of my would-be attacker, no doubt directly related to the fact that some of Arcosteel's finest work was protruding from the centre of his chest. I do recall that I had a moment to appreciate the crafting of the handle- it was surprisingly comfortable to grip, slightly ribbed to keep a hold of, weighted so that it didn't even come out of my hand as it plunged into his ribcage. I made a mental note to compliment the company, but then thought better of it. It'd be like Westinghouse begging Hitler not to endorse their ovens. Not a strong sales point, you know? Plus the tag line "have your neighbours for dinner" would take on an unfortunate meaning. In this particular case, "A Cut Above" had become "A Cut Above The Small Intestine".
He staggered back and tried to make some words noiselessly, then fell to the ground and bled for a bit.
I walked around to see him blinking furiously, his hand clutching his wound as if it would do the job of a bandage.
"When's the last time you washed your hand?" I asked.
"Wh-hhh-hh-why?" he managed to stammer.
"'Cos I guess you wouldn't want blood poisoning. Although when all your blood is running out of your chest, why would you care if it's poisoned."
"Oh... God..."
It was time to seize the moment. This was the only lead I was going to get, and it had been gift-dropped onto seven inches of unfortunately placed pointed steel.
"Well, the good news is there's an ambulance on the way. It'd be terrible if they were sent away and you were left to, y'know, bleed to death alone in the apartment you were breaking into for a nefarious purpose."
"P...please... no..."
"No ambulance?"
"Tell...you...what...you...want...to...know."
"Who do you work for?"
"Curdles...And...Whey," he managed to gasp. "Please...ambulance...first?"
"Wait, Curdles And Whey the cheesemongers?"
"Seriously...lifeblood...everywhere...dying...not...enjoying...it...at....all."
"Who is the woman in the black trenchcoat?"
"Veronica...Hamstead...please... I'm just... a research... assistant."
"Then what were you doing here?"
"Getting...computer...hard...drive...research...file."
"And where is Veronica Hamstead now?"
"At...office..."
He trailed off and started gurgling. I don't have time for gurglers. So I got ready to leave. You might consider that cold and heartless, given that this was some poor deluded kid sent on a mission by someone in a fat padded chair, likely with an income that would dwarf the GDP of a small island nation in the South Pacific. The thought even crossed my mind. But being tasered had really given me an appetite, and it was time for some doughnuts.
I walked across the room, and paused by the door.
"Stay here, the ambulance is on its way."
"Where...did...you..think...I...would...be...going?" he managed to gasp sarcastically. "Blind...date...with...my...shirt...ruined?"
Y'know, I was starting to like this kid. One last thing to wrap up. I knelt down beside his head.
"Anyone asks, Veronica Hamstead stabbed you."
"Or... what...?"
"Or, I guess, I could on all this blood and accidentally fall on you with this knife again. Maybe in the groin."
"That...bitch...stabbed...me... don't...let...her...get away... with it."
"Good man."

Marty had taken his car, which meant I would have been without transport. Fortunately for me, the research assistant's car was parked downstairs and the engine was still running. Normally, that's an invitation in this town for itinerant drifter sex, but the rain must have kept them inside their refrigerator boxes tonight. I slid across the seat, turned on the GPS, and selected "home", which showed the route to an industrial complex on the outside of town.

As I drove, I paused to reflect on the bizarre nature of this crime. Mark Stevens was stabbed in a back alley. His confidante- or fellow nerd- Edward Pennington was killed a day later. Some blonde woman appears at both crime scenes, once actually killing the victim, the other assumed. Cheese remains on Stevens' shirt, a number of cheeses on Pennington's video camera, and an industrial cheesemonger in between.
Could this be corporate espionage? No, who would spy on cheese? It was about as exciting as lettuce farming. How much thrill could be involved in curdling a dairy product? The only thing you could say about it was that eventually it might grate on you. But that was a cheesy joke.
The woman in black seemed to be the big conundrum. Edward Pennington and Mark Stevens didn't work together, they were just nerds on a comic forum in similar lines of work. One might assume that they shared research notes, but it's hard to see how that would have made anything they did murder-worthy. A strongly-worded memo or a termination of employment, perhaps, but a termination of breathing seemed like someone really didn't want to sort out severance pay.
So possibly a disgruntled Human Resources manager. Wouldn't surprise me. Those people are always a few hammers short of a mongoose.

Curdles And Whey were a local success story. The unfortunate surnames of two local lads, Charles Curdles and Daniel Whey, they had built an industry around a unique ability to find new forms of cheese. Aerosol-distributed cheese, aimed at fattening up populations of third-world countries in a technique not unlike crop-dusting, but with a result closer to what a table looks like after you spill a packet of Twisties. Tinned cheese so rubbery it was used by fire departments to catch people jumping out of windows, with the added advantage that it could be melted to feed the newly-homeless. Cheese-water had had a go competing with coconut water, but after the fifteenth admission to hospital, they'd decided to pull the line.
But the fact that cheese lines could be new and improved hardly seemed a justification for murder. In fact, the title "Lead Fermentation Researcher" was pretty much a contraceptive in itself.

I reached the factory, and pressed the remote beside the rear-view mirror which opened its large, mechanical gates. The factory buildings loomed in the distance. Even at this hour of the night, large forklifts shifted mysterious boxes from warehouses to trucks. I felt that itch at the back of the neck, the adrenal spike that told me the game was afoot, or else I was hypertensive again.

Pulled up beside a darkened warehouse with a single light in the top room. Dead give-away. Also, the fact that the building was marked "Distribution and Administration" might have been contributory. Along with the directory on the wall that said "Veronica Hamstead- Floor 1, Room 14." But mostly the light in the top room.

I pulled my Colt .38 from my jacket. Or at least, I think I did. Did Colt make a .38? Probably. It was a gun and I had occasionally shot it. Beyond that, it was like asking me to name a great Chinese race driver. "Chan" was the best I could do.

Confrontations have to be done right in the PI game. You need to keep your suspect on their toes, uncertain. They need to know the jig is up, and that you have the power of life or death over them. If they think otherwise, they'll shoot you, or stab you, or go to court and take out an injunction against you on the grounds that you shouldn't have been stealing their underwear off the washing line and selling it on eBay.
I snuck up the stairs, and kicked the door in. There was a scream.
"Veronica Hamstead, freeze!" I yelled at the small clerk who had her hands raised high above her short, black hair. Oops.
"V-V-V-Veronica is two doors down. Th-thi-this is room tw-tw-welve."
Two doors later, I kicked the right door in, and ducked as a knife sailed over my head.
"You'll never take me alive!" screamed Veronica in a voice that sounded oddly deep.
"Freeze!" I yelled in response, but she shoulder-charged me and knocked me into the filing cabinet with the force of a small truck. I collapsed, but managed to grab her ankle as she tried to step over me. Pulled her leg hard and she fell to the ground. I staggered to my knees and scrambled after her. She had just gotten to her feet and was limping down the hallway back to the stairs that led to the warehouse floor. She grabbed the handrail just as I reached her, and by "reached her" I mean "hit her hard from behind with a broom handle I found." She flipped over and swung, one hand dangling, the other firmly grasping the handrail. I lay down on a stair and extended my hand.
"Quick! Take it, or you'll fall!" I yelled. She didn't answer, just looked into my eyes, and let go. I was hoping she hadn't noticed that she was only an inch off the ground.
She began limping across the warehouse floor when the doors rolled up, lights shone in, and I heard Marty's voice yelling "Freeze! We have you surrounded!"
Veronica, bewildered and panicked, looked left and right and seemed to decide to make a run for it. I tackled her to the ground, and grabbed her hair, which came away in my hand.
Mark Stevens' face stared back at me. And totally explained why Veronica Hamstead had an adam's apple.

It was some hours later. We were in the interrogation room, with Mark Stevens sitting opposite us.
"We have you on tape," I said to him, "you might as well confess."
"We do?" hissed Karen beside me. "When were you planning on telling us?"
"Shut up," I hissed back, "I'll show you later."
Stevens seemed to reach an answer. "Ok, so I killed him," he said. "I killed Pennington."
"But you worked at Finkelstein's Fine Foods!"
"By day, yes. I became Veronica Hamstead to keep an eye on Edward."
"Why?"
"Why? Because I thought Edward had cracked it! We had spent so much time discussing heroes and villains, that we stumbled across an idea that would make us billions: Exploding Cheese!"
I kept my face carefully deadpan. "Exploding. Cheese."
"Think about it! Every terrorist in the world has to fear sniffer dogs. Every undercover agent needs a backup that can appear totally legitimate! Edward had been a pioneer in his research for plastic cheese for the fire department, and it wasn't long before he realised that same plasticity could be possibly manipulated into a form of plastic explosives by re-ordering the polymer chains!"
"So why kill him?"
"I had no choice! He sent me some research which was partially encrypted. I didn't have time to break it completely, but the notes confirmed it was extremely explosive ingested. I immediately sold it to a group of jihadists I met on the online dating site Unveiled- this was the perfect thing for taking out an aircraft or an unassuming urban location. But when I called Pennington, he told me what the whole thing had said!"
"Which was?"
"'Causes Extremely Explosive Diarrhoea When Ingested'."
"So it was a failure? Guess you don't want a bunch of terrorists crapping their pants instead of going to paradise."
"These people don't take no for an answer! The only way was to make it seem like we'd been killed for betraying our countries and companies, and the research stolen! So I faked my death, and arranged to meed Edward as Veronica Hamstead."
Marty decided to chime in now. "But how," he asked, sliding the crime scene image across the desk, "did you manage to take a picture of yourself as a dead body and also get yourself in this photo?"
"I also moonlight as a photographer for the Police Department as Veronica," he replied. "I took a photo of my body on the camera timer, but then took another one as a background plate so I could remove any evidence in Photoshop and put the two images together. But when taking a shot of the background plate, I must've been caught in the reflection of the car's window."
"So whose body do we have in the morgue?" Karen asked.
"I told the ambulance boys that the body had already been picked up. I'm willing to bet nobody in the department has wanted to admit that the body was lost. They were probably going to bury and empty casket."
I leaned across the table, and stared right into his eyes.
"One last question, then," I intoned, endeavouring to look so stone-serious that Mount Rushmore looked like watercolours, "Why did you stab the research assistant you sent to the apartment?"
"What?"
"Yeah, what?" asked Marty. "What research assistant?"
"Why would I stab someone I sent to the apartment?" Veronica/Mark asked, looking completely lost.
"I don't have time for this bullshit!" I yelled back at him. "You're a liar and a murderer and can't be trusted! And you're going away for a long time!"
And with that, I stood up and attempted to storm out of the room. The door was locked.
Karen approached me.
"Who was stabbed?" she asked me.
"It doesn't matter!"
"It does to me!"
"I'm not on trial here! I wouldn't stab anyone randomly even if they did fall on me!"
"Knut, I'm not suggesting you did- wait, what did you just say?"
"I said what's she or he putting in his or her mouth?"
We turned to see VeroniMark casually slipping a piece of cheese from his pocket into his mouth. A peaceful smile spread across his face. I turned to Karen and Mark, and yelled "Down!!" as time turned slow-motion. I leapt through the air, my head turning as VeroniMark seemed to grow bigger. As my arms hit them and bore them to the ground, I heard him say "Ha, this is the right formula!" before there was a sound like a sack of cabbages hitting the pavement after being dropped off the top of the Empire State Building. When we raised our heads, all that was left was a pair of legs sitting in the chair, covered in fishnet stockings. I had to admit, he had pretty good legs for a lady.

As we wandered out from the station, ignoring the bustling of the fire crews who had come running in, I turned to Karen and Marty.
"How did you guys know where I was?" I asked. "I had a lead that you couldn't know about."
"Easy," Marty said. "Since you usually work outside our methods and interfere with our crime scenes, when Karen tasered unconscious, we put a tracker in your jacket pocket and followed you once you stopped."
Marty. You've gotta watch him, 'cos sometimes, he does something perfectly right. I reached into my jacket and tossed the tracker back to him.
"It's the quiet ones you have to watch out for," I said to him. "Exploding cheese? First sign of a fermented mind."
"That's a pretty cheesy joke," Marty countered.
"Hey, Fetta you than me."
"It was a Tasty case."
"Yeah, but you don't want to die provolone like that guy."
"Provolone?"
"Like, 'alone.' But a type of cheese."
"Ah."
I walked down the stairs and turned back to them, my friends, my partners in justice, one of them my occasional 3am heavy-breathing-phone-call destination, being lit by the blue and red emergency lights still flashing in the car park. The sun would be up soon.
"We solved a good case," I said. "I guess we'll be putting the team back together?"
Karen looked at Marty, then looked at me.

"We'll call you," she said.

The Cheese Murder Mystery Part 3- The Silver Hawk

This was bad. Very bad. Not very bad like "wow, I spilled the milk" or "quick, in the closet, I think I hear my husband" or "I just came back from the doctor's, you need to get yourself tested." No, this was a different kind of level, like they-slipped-and-fell-on-the-knife-I-was-holding variety of bad.

There were two fundamental problems. The first was that now I had lost my main lead in a case that had the potential to resurrect my career from the toilet bowl it had become, land me a retainer with the department so I could still pick my own jobs, and maybe even afford a car whose rear doors weren't held closed with duct tape. A resurrection after a fall from grace does not come easily, and opportunities are rarer than a white elephant or an STD that Lindsay Lohan hasn't already acquired.
The second fundamental problem, I'll explain later.

When the Pennington lead went dead- kind of like Pennington himself had- I had a limited window to stay ahead of the cops, and Marty in particular. I needed to identify the connection between Pennington and the extant- and extinct- victim, Mark Stevens, so as to determine if the murders were linked or coincidental. I then had to deduce the identity of the woman in the black trench coat.

Pennington had to be the priority- there were few identifiers for the woman in black, and the lack of witnesses to the murder already meant I'd be chasing smoke if I went after her first. Marty offered me a ride in his car, and since by now it was raining and I wasn't confident the duct tape would hold on my own vehicle, I graciously accepted his offer.

He'd been shot in his apartment. The size of the wound suggested it was probably a .38 caliber round, but we wouldn't know for sure until the lab had retrieved the slug remains and provided its autopsy.

The apartment itself was nice enough. It was located in a reasonable neighbourhood, the building about 20 years old but well-maintained, the unit renovated to allow for the high power needs of those in their early 30's and inclined towards the nerdier things in life. Four computers with glowing cases sat underneath a huge workstation area that took up the allotment which would have been sold in Real Estate speak as the "large, open-plan dining area", with eight monitors taking up the entire area in a 180 degree curve. Meals had been consumed in the kitchen itself, on the bench, near the sink, and the dishes placed directly in.
The rest of the layout was expected. Figurines of Yoda, schematics for the Millennium Flacon, a phaser from the original Star Trek show, and Warhammer figures in various stages of being painted, all the assorted paraphernalia guaranteed to keep a man a virgin well into his 40's. A huge, 70-inch TV sat on one wall.

Looking around the apartment while Marty chatted with the photographers, I noticed a single toothbrush, a small tube of tooth paste, single-serve microwave meals in the freezer, a single bed in the bedroom, a single bed-side table, a single recliner in the front of the TV.
"I reckon the vic was single," I said to Marty.
"How do you figure?"
"'Cos he was ugly."

Hmmmmm. Two plates and two sets of cutlery in the sink, though.

I turned around just as Karen McGilvray stepped into the room. Karen Friggin' McGilvray. I guess I should put the phrase "Senior Lead Detective" in front of her name, but part of my just couldn't bring myself to do it, because "Backstabbing Horrid Knut-Hating Bitch" kept jumping up in front of it. Her eyes narrowed as she saw me, and strode across, her severe-looking black suit swishing with each vengeful stride.
"Knut, what are you doing here?" she demanded.
"I'm on retainer, Karen. I believe this is Marty's case," I replied, trying to appeal for help. She turned around and fixed Marty with a beady glare.
"Marty, what the hell?!" she snapped. "I thought we had made it clear we did not deal with Mr. Tortenheimel's... agency, any more."
"Whoa, whoa," I said, "what's with the pause before 'agency'? I'm a legitimate investigative business!"
"Well," she replied, "aside from the fact that I've seen a blind guide dog be of more use than you, you screwed us on three cases and sold your stories to the press instead, removed and then replaced evidence from a crime scene-"
"You can't prove that!"
"So that you could 'miraculously' re-discover it- and yes we can prove it- and finally, told a kidnap victim's family not to get the police involved."
"I got the kid back, didn't I?"
"Yeah, missing three fingers and an ear."
"You only have his parent's word for it that he wasn't missing those before he was kidnapped. Anyway, you arrested a clown- an actual clown- at a children's birthday party on suspicion of that kidnapping!"
"Based on information you gave me, Knut!"
"I didn't give it to you, you took it out of the pocket of my pants after we slept together, and you left me handcuffed to the bed. It's not my fault you can't be trusted and I like to leave a few... decoys around for precaution. You can't sleep your way to a case conclusion, Karen, although heavens knows you've tried."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Come on, you drop your pants so often the elastic in your underwear needs to be replaced on a weekly basis! If I put the people you hadn't slept with in a police line-up, it'd be one lonely guy saying 'she had me booked for next week'!"

I slowly regained consciousness. It appeared that after Karen had tasered me, I had hit my head on a bench whilst I was collapsing. The bruise on my rib suggested she'd kicked me on the ground, too. There was a note on my chest.
Hey, Knut, the photographers had to drag Karen away from you. An ambulance will be here in a bit, I have to go make a report about the incident. Try not to bleed too much on the crime scene. Your pal, Marty.

Perfect. I was now alone in the crime scene, unencumbered by pesky procedural business. Knut's Kunning Koncepts win the day again.
I hit a key on the computer, which buzzed from sleep into life across two of the monitors, and entered "Leia69" as the password. To my surprise, the password was accepted. The desktop flared into life and a dozen folders appeared. Research Files read one. eBay photos read another. General Accounts was the one I selected, since money tended to be the first place to look for motive- last deposit, or last withdrawal said a lot about a person's final movements too. Instead, however, it was a bunch of video files, from a CCTV camera that appeared to be hidden in the kitchen- from the angle, it must have been in the steam extractor above the stove. I turned around- there was nothing visible, but five slots standard halfway up the extraction chamber must have been where the camera was located, cos the rest was stainless steel.

I waved my hands. A miniature me appeared appeared on the screen as an application launched, waving at myself in the same room. A menu selector came up and I hit rewind. First, I could see me regaining consciousness, then lying back down, the Karen appeared to be dragged back in, then she kicked me repeatedly in the side while screaming incoherently, then I un-collapsed, got un-tasered, and wandered back out of the unit. I kept rewinding.
There was the victim. He un-bled, un-collapsed, stood back up, and looked terrified with his hands in the air.

The woman in black standing there, holding a gun at him. Blonde hair. No sunglasses this time. Same trenchcoat- guess she didn't want to risk getting blood on her. I rewound further and pressed "play". A dinner in the kitchen. Lots of gestures. The vic wanders to the fridge- just off-camera, but you could see the light from the door come on- and came back with a number of cheeses. Lots of gesturing, the blonde woman looking interested. Then the gun drawn, the shot fired, and the woman approaches the body, side-steps the expanding pool of blood, and ripped something off the lapel of the vic's jacket. I returned to the fridge- it was completely empty.

I loaded up the vic's photo application. Convention shots, cosplay, one of him wearing Leia's golden bikini that could not be un-seen; it was like Jabba the Hutt and Leia had had offspring and neither was happy about it. A number of photos of him at a lab wearing his jacket, with a silver hawk pin on the lapel. A pin that was now missing.

I logged out of the computer- the cops could try to figure a way past the password on their own. I went back to the kitchen again and looked around. The panel on the steam extractor was slightly ajar, so I took a knife from the knife block and tried to wedge it open.
There was the sound of footsteps behind me I had been unaware of. I turned, and a man I had never seen before walked through the door, then ran at me, slipped on part of the blood on the floor, and fell onto the knife I was holding.

This was bad. And was now my second fundamental problem.

The Cheese Murder Mystery Part 2- The Woman in Black

"This isn't exactly what I expected."

"What did you expect?"

"I dunno, maybe a crime scene that looked like a crime scene?"

"That fact that a crime occurred makes it a de facto crime scene."

"Yeah, but this looks like your apartment."

"Marty, it is my apartment. These are photos of the crime scene."

"Oh, yeah. Then I guess the photos look like a crime scene."

"Your genius never ceases to amaze me."

"Well, that's why I'm a detective. What're your thoughts?"

"Incident is pretty straightforward. Vic has a bloody wound to the back of the head. No obvious trauma to the rest of the body. Guess he could also have been suffocated while unconscious, but he definitely wasn't strangled. And he was a virgin."

"How can you tell?"

"The T-shirt."

"Oh, yeah."

"What about you?"

There was a pause on the other side of the table.

"Well, guess I'm going OK. Sleeping reasonably. Been a bit constipated this week."

"Marty, what the hell? I'm not asking you about your personal life!"

Marty seemed somewhat let down. "Oh," he said despondently.

"I'm asking if you've found something else out since you are, by your own admission, a detective. Although heavens knows why."

"Yeah, Mark Stevens it seems is just your run-of-the-mill guy. Works- er, worked, in R&D at Finkelstein's Fine Foods."
"Don't they make food?" 

"How'd you know?" asked Marty, without any trace of either irony or sarcasm.

"Lucky guess."

"Well, he worked in the cheese laboratory. Some advanced researcher in fermentation procedures. Who'd want to kill a guy who makes cheese?"

"I dunno. Some cracker?"

"Funny."

Looking at the scene together, there still wasn't much to go on. Dirt car park behind a comic shop, well travelled, unobtrusive, no direct line of sight. There were no signs of a struggle, which suggested that the Vic knew his attackers and didn't see the hit coming.

I mulled over things. "Did you speak to the Vic's family?" I asked Marty.

"Hasn't got any. Mother and father died, only child, no significant others. We did speak to his workplace, but they just said he'd stepped out to lunch and hadn't come back. Didn't say anything dramatic, and he usually hits the comics shop and then gets a hamburger. Or, y'know, twelve."

"I wouldn't have guessed. Guess that's why they didn't try to stab him. You'd need a machete to get halfway through the guts."

Angles and motive take time and deep thought to properly understand and get a picture of, but this was a no-go from the start. No names, no witnesses, no family, no motive, no chilli fries. I didn't mind running up a few hours on the Department's account, but this was ridiculous.

In fact, there was nothing at all to go on. Nothing, that is, unless you had in your possession a pair of cracked spectacles with the name Edward Pennington engraved in the side. It was the only solid lead and I could pursue it in my own time and fudge the details later. And convincing Marty that I had just stumbled upon the information- as opposed to interfering with a crime scene- would be relatively simple, since during one interrogation he had asked a suspect who was covered in blood and had defensive wounds on his hands whether or not he had committed the crime, and had let him go when the guy had answered that had cut his hands repeatedly cooking dinner and had wiped them on his clothes because he hadn't wanted to ruin the roast.

"I'm thinking of checking out the Edward Pennington angle," Marty said.

I kept my face carefully deadpan. "Who's Edward Pennington?" 

"Apparently, some guy he'd been trading comics with online. We had a look through his computer at home, and it was the only thing he really did. That, and argue with strangers about whether Captain America was cooler than Wolverine."

"Was he?"

"Of course not. Everyone knows Deadpool is the the coolest."

"Marty, when did you last have a date with a woman?"

"Last week."

"Pay-per-view websites don't count."

"Oh, then six months?"

"So who is Pennington?"

"Dunno, I've got the boys back at precinct looking into him. They argued about superhero biology and effects of third-party introduced mutation strains versus inherent mutation on long-term adaptation to changing environmental conditions, so I got the impression that he's got a research background too. But we have to find him first, and then see what we get out him."

Marty's phone rang. He glanced at it, picked it up, and answered. I looked back down at the photos again, inwardly cursing that I wasn't going to be able to crack this part alone and take the credit. Stared, willing the scene to reveal something else useful. An empty site. A lone corpse. No clear footprints or tyre tracks. The standard-issue police cruiser the photographer had driven up. 

The reflection of someone in the window.

I slid the photo towards me. Was it the photographer? No, I knew Becky, because the restraining order didn't run out for another three months. It was someone else.

Black trenchcoat. Blonde hair. Sunglasses. The woman in black.

I could hear Marty's conversation in the background.

"Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I'll be right there."

He turned to me.

"Well, we've found Pennington."

"Let's go interview him, then," I replied, my eyes still lingering on the photograph.

"Sorry, Knut, you can't interview him."

"Why the hell not?"

"'Cos he's dead."

The Cheese Murder Mystery- Part 1- Discoveries and recoveries

There are, occasionally, life events which are intrinsically tied to meteorological phenomena. The oldest, and most easily expected in my profession, is the grey sleet that falls when you investigate a corpse. It's almost gratifying; it's like the universe is winking at you. That certain point in the day when the light is fading, the street lights and the city's neons flicker into life, the rain starts to come in sideways, and detectives get to wear trench coats and hats and stand around as the impact of the rain mixed with the lights forms a sort of halo around them. Murder is, of course, terrible, but sometimes it makes you look legitimate. 

Cops won't tell you this, but secretly, they love murder, especially if it's a gruesome one that's gotten some media attention. To be the detective who cracked the case, and have your photo in the paper taken at that same scene, in the rain, the halo of refraction around you, well, it's an announcement to the thrill-seeking ladies of the town that here is the epitome of derring-do. You become a beacon of light that stands against the encroaching dark, the last bastion of morality in a world gone mad, a fearless stalwart, immovable, incorruptible, and totally available for a meaningful overnight relationship. The only thing that trumps it is hanging off the roof of a car during a high-speed chase. I had a friend who did that once. "Armless Harry" was his nickname.

I was, therefore, somewhat annoyed at things as they presented themselves to. This corpse had been discovered, by me, during the hottest point of the day, on the sunniest day of the year. Cool, evening, mid-rain corpses aren't as gross and sticky and definitely don't inflate the way that baking-in-the-afternoon-sun corpses do. The skin was all blotchy and it was clear that any contact would leave you with an odour that would be repellant to just about every form of female attention other than flies. It smelled like someone had boiled socks in a microwave and then tipped in some sour milk and baked beans for good measure. Worse still, it looked relatively commonplace, uneventful, and there's nothing worse than a murder where the only possible benefit to the investigator is that it will at least contribute to his child support payments. I thought about just poking it with a stick, but decided it was probably best to call it in.

The vic (that's short for "victim"; you'd better learn the lingo if you want to sound legitimate enough inside your own head) was male, late 20's, highly overweight, with a t-shirt whose motto bore the legend "Nobody Knows I'm A Lesbian" was still visible through the miscellaneous stains that had accrued. It was clear this guy ate a lot of melted cheese or cheese-related products. Not exactly someone the world would miss.
With a practiced eye, I could see that he'd been hit over the back of the head with some kind of implement, probably for his wallet, with a little bit too much force, although no doubt the sudden meeting with the pavement as unconsciousness wrapped her tender arms around him and her sultry compatriot, Gravity, pulled him directly down for her part in the three-way, had not helped his odds of survival.
A pair of circular spectacles, cracked and folorn, lay on the pavement nearby.

I called Marty, a friend of mine from the local PD. When you go private, it's always best to maintain some good contacts, and the key to a good contact is that they must not, under any circumstances, be better than you at their job. Marty was a unique guy- overall, he was about as useful as a chocolate shovel, but he had a number of successful cases to his name because sometimes, somehow, he'd do something absolutely brilliant. His problem was that afterwards, he could never remember what it is he'd done, or how he'd done it, but it always seemed to happen about the time the department was asking themselves why they had continued to employ a detective whose overall ability, to the practiced eye, appeared about on par with a marmoset who'd been commissioned to write a novel. You were certain that all you'd get is a sheet filled with letters and banana stains, but that odd, coherent paragraph made you stop and think 'perhaps there is some point to this after all.'

"Marty?"
"Who's this?"
"Marty, look at your phone. It tells you who's calling."
There was silence while I presume he looked at his phone. Then I could hear him screaming from a distance "HEY, KNUT, HOW ARE YOU?!?"
"Marty, you can put the phone back to your ear to talk to me again."
"Oh, yeah. Sweet. So, what's up?"
"Got a corpse on the South-West Side behind Jimmy's Comics. Thought you might wanna get a look."
"Oh, sweet! Wait, why?"
"Because someone's dead, Marty, and you're a cop."
"Right. Right. But I'm a detective. What is there to detect?"
"Um, how he died?"
"But isn't that why you're there?"
"No, Marty, we've had this conversation. I'm a private detective. I don't look into these things until someone agrees to hire me, either the Department, or a relative of the victim."
"Oh, yeah. So wait, why were you there?"
And here we have a marmoset-paragraph moment, where he'd ask something pertinent. I hated those.
"I was supposed to be meeting someone."
"What, the vic?"
"No, someone else."
"Was that someone else the vic too?"
"No, they wer- actually, I don't know."
"Did they kill the vic?"
"OK, stop saying 'the vic' all the time."
"But you told me I needed to to sound legitimate!"
"Just get down here, you can ask the rest of your questions once you've hired me."
"I dunno, Knut, department budget's been tight and they don't like hiring outside when they've got a full staff. Sounds like it might be pretty straightforward- they probably don't need you on this."
Here, it was clear, it would take some complex negotiating to convince him of the pressing need to arrange for my hefty retainer. I had to think like Marty, or like Marty doesn't think, either way. Whatever I said would have to make him jump into action; it had to be cunning, believable, plausible, with just a hint of mystery.
"He looks like he might have been a scientist at a secret government lab, but was probably undercover. The terrorists might already have formula and time is of the essence, or the monkeys will gain sentience and then we'll be facing an all out human-primate war. Special Agent Jack Bauer probably will be wanting the report as soon as possible."
"Oh, really? Awesome! I'll be right there and I'll bring the paperwork!"

As I waited for Marty, I picked up the glasses, turned them over in my hand. There was a name engraved on the side- Edward Pennington. So that was the victim's name.
You shouldn't disturb a corpse before forensics has a look, but I had time to burn and since I wasn't going to be meeting my contact here any time soon. And by "contact" I mean "hooker".
I reached into his right pocket, expecting it to be empty if indeed this had been a simple mugging. Instead, his wallet was intact, and full of cash- $565, to be precise. Curious.
As I took the money out of his wallet to put in my pocket, since I was sure it wasn't going to be relevant to the case and I had my own expenses to cover thus far, I glanced at his driver's license.

Mark Stevens- name, photo, address, date of birth. So who was Edward Pennington?