Chapter 4
From the perspective of Detective Ema Skye
Date: 08 May
Time: 8:30 AM
Location: Wright Anything Agency.
I slept in Mr Wright's bed that night.
You can get that idea out of your head! I can't see you obviously, but I know what sort of look you have in your face! I'll have you know, Mr Wright was a perfect gentleman, and slept on the sofa.
Anyway, I slept at the Wright place. I didn't want to leave Mr Wright on his own. His daughter was missing, his other house-mate hospitalised. I wanted to be close at hand in case something came up.
After breakfast, we went over to the detention centre. It's a well lit place with guards in all the right places. Perfectly safe. It's quite reassuring in a building full of potential killers. Using my police clearance I made the arrangements for us to see Colby R King
We sat down at the table, where we were supposed to meet him. Then he emerged, with a guard.
He looked in his mid twenties. About my age. A tall, thin guy with oily skin. His hair was a greasy blonde at the font, and black at the back. It was a big mass of hair stretching out of the side of his head like a hood, with a pony tail starting from the bottom of his neck and stretching down to his belt.
His eyes were small. A dirty green colour with long thin pupils. He slithered into the room and slowly sat down. He looked pretty cheesed off.
'What do you want?' he hissed.
I showed him my badge. 'We'd like to ask you about the incident last night.'
'Look, I didn't kill the old bastard!' he screamed, slamming the desk and leaping out of his chair, like a boxing glove on a spring. I was glad there was a glass panel to protect us. 'He was dead before I got home! I told that dumbass who arrested me!'
'Then tell us too. We can't get you off the hook otherwise.' said Mr Wright. Interestingly, he didn't react much to Colby's screaming. He just sat there, arms folded and patiently tapping his figure to his arm.
Colby snorted. 'And who the hell are you? Some big shot lawyer?'
'Something like that.'
'Get bent! I can't afford a lawyer! Even a scruffy one like you!' Looking at Mr Wright, I guess it would be hard to convince people he still practised law, in his blue fleece and bob hat. He didn't even bother to shave this morning. He really looked like he let himself go ever since he was disbarred.
'Well, somebody already did, so now you're stuck with us.' Mr Wright made that comeback pretty quickly. Nowadays he seemed like a chess master. Like no matter what gets thrown at him, he's always got a solution in the pipeline. A big contrast to that goofy, easily flustered straight arrow he was back in the day.
Colby signed.
'Alright. Like I said. I got home that night, and my dad was lying there on the floor.'
'What time was this?' I took out my pen and made notes.
'9:30. I'd come home from my local bar. I usually don't get in that early though.'
'A pity.' Mr Wright was actually smirking. 'if you could actually take your booze you'd have a watertight alibi.'
'You shut up!' Colby snapped. I'm really starting to dislike this guy.
Mr Wright actually laughed. Was he enjoying it?
'Afraid I can't shut up just yet. But give us some addresses and we can get to work on your case.'
I noted the addresses he gave us. His home address, where the murder took place. An apartment belonging to a friend of the family, his younger brother's place, and the bar he was drinking at that night. At last we could get away from him.
'Yup.' said Mr Wright once we left the detention centre.
'Yup, what?' I asked.
'He's definitely a jerk.' If I didn't know that reading someone's mind was scientifically impossible, I would have sworn that's what Mr Wright just did.
'Do you think he really did it?'
'Hard to say at the moment. If he's really innocent Trucy wouldn't be held for ransom.' His brow furrowed. It must be really hard for him, with his daughter missing. But he still put on a brave face. My sister was just the same. I admire that kind of strength.
Soon we arrived at the crime scene. A nice estate in the good part of town. We went into the King residence, to be confronted by a rather scruffy senior detective.
This particular inspector was a homicide detective who gives the mathematically impossible sum of two hundred percent into his work. Back in the day he had an unfortunate tendency to commit blunders. While a skilled investigator, he did tend to overlook some of the less obvious clues left at a crime scene. As a result he accumulated a 40% salary cut, and a loss of pension rights. None the less, in the time I was out of the country he enjoyed a deal of success in other police endeavours and it was through these numerous successes that he avoided being kicked off the force. In fact he apparently did it often enough that he was eventually promoted to a chief inspector.
'Hold it! This is a crime scene, pal!'
'Well, well. Detective Dick Gumshoe.' Mr Wright grinned like a gentleman thief who constantly eludes the determined investigator. 'This is a pleasure. I haven't seen you in a while.'
'Err, likewise.' said the confused detective returning the smile. 'And its Chief Inspector Gumshoe now, pal!' He finished that sentence with his head held high and his massive pecks far out in front.
'Most impressive. And here I thought that you being promoted meant I'd seen the last of you.'
Mr Wright looked over at the white rope outlining the corpse.
'Sorry pal!' Gumshoe side stepped in front. 'Only authorised personnel!'
'We are authorised.' I said. 'I'd like to help with this case, and Mr Wright is helping with my inquires.'
'Oh its you Ema. That's okay then.' said Chief Gumshoe. We surveyed the room. I noticed the ginger tabby on the sofa. What a cute animal! I couldn't help but smile. It purred as I began to stroke it.
'Hello little one! What are you doing lurking around a crime scene?' I affected a baby talk voice to converse with the feline. Mr Wright raised an eyebrow at me. Grinning in as if he'd caught me with my hand in the cookie jar. What? It's what one does when they talk to a cute little kitty!
'That belongs to the victim.' said the Chief Inspector rubbing the band aid on his hand. 'I'm keeping an eye on him until someone comes to take him in care.'
That was odd. The cat could mess up the crime scene (Cute creatures do have a tendency to be endearingly clumsy. I know first hand that I screwed up a little when I was an adorable teenager) so why didn't Gumshoe just put it outside?
'Why didn't you just take it to a neighbour?' I asked.
He rubbed his band aid again. Because that cat is a vicious fighting machine! I almost lost my hand trying to move it once!'
I shook my head and picked the cat up, but couldn't help but smile. I soon put it down outside.
Mr Wright looked around, rubbing the stubble on his chin. He unzipped his fleece.
'A little stuffy in here, isn't it? Can't we open a window?'
'We've got to keep the crime scene exactly as it was when we arrived.' I pointed out.
'Besides,' Chief Gumshoe added 'those windows need a key to open them.'
Mr Wright looked impressed.
'Tight security. Mr King must have been quite the cautious man.'
'So, what can you tell us about the victim?' I asked.
'Regal King. Widower. We're still waiting for the autopsy report, but it looks like someone whacked him on the head with a candlestick.'
There were bloodstains around the outline of the poor man's head.
'The candlestick's already been taken to the evidence room. I dusted it for prints earlier and they match the guy we arrested.'
That didn't sound good, but it wasn't the end of the world.
'Well he does live here, Chief. It doesn't seem too farfetched that his prints would be on it.'
'Unfortunately, there was a witness.'
We should have seen that coming. A witness too. This looks bad. I sort of feel sorry for Apollo, if he's defending tomorrow.
As we left the house Mr Wright turned. Then he starred.
'You!' two men said at once. One was Mr Wright, the other, I realised as I looked over the garden fence in his direction, in his yellow business suit, and square spectacles glistening in the morning light was the thin personage of the balding Prosecutor Winston Payne.
'Well, this is a nice surprise, Winston!'
'You would think it so nice if you'd been here last night!' said Payne in his astonishingly high pitched tenor voice. 'A murder committed right next door!'
Now I really feel sorry for Apollo. Mr Payne was obviously the witness Inspector Gumshoe mentioned.
'So you won't be prosecuting the trail tomorrow?'
'As much as I'd love to finally send that King boy down, I can't as I'm required to testify what I saw. Prosecutor Gavin's going to be on the job tomorrow.'
Great. As if things weren't bad enough, we now have that smug poser to contend with. I noticed Mr Wright looking as though he were plotting some fatal practice.
Then, Mr Wright's phone went off.
