"I'm not sorry at all, no, no, oh I'm not sorry at all, no, no. I'd do it over again." Well, you won't be able to if you're dead now, will you?
Epilogue: Keep You in the Dark…So Who Are You?
Detective Kearney tapped his foot impatiently. "This doesn't make any sense. What happened here, Kate, and why?"
His partner, Detective Kerrington, scowled at him. "We aren't on first name terms, Kearney. If I knew what happened do you think I'd be waiting on the crime scene investigators to get done with the prelim search?"
"Rhetorical question," he muttered, trying to ignore the barbed comment she'd made. So he wasn't the best at keeping relationships formal. She didn't have to kick him around just because he'd asked if she had a boyfriend.
The thirty-year-old woman crossed her arms as the crew of preliminary examiners exited. "You can go in now," nodded the photographer. "We've got good photos and a couple of fingerprints. It's pretty gory in there though."
"We'll manage," Detective Kerrington said stiffly. Kearney knew she hated having to be second to the prelim examiners. She swept in ahead of him, taking care to snap on her latex gloves and pointedly asking if he'd remembered his.
"Yes," he said with a vain effort at hiding his indignation. He pulled his own gloves on and let her lead the search of the house.
When the police left that night they had found each of the ten bodies lying on their individual beds, sheets neatly pulled over them. It was going to be difficult to judge the order of death since that blasted ferryman hadn't returned to the island in time. The house was locked and there was sufficient temperature management to preserve the corpses as best as possible under the circumstances, and the tight screening meant no insects could get in to infest them. Nice for the autopsy and PM people to determine the cause of death, but for when they needed to manage the timeline? Not so much. At least they had identified all ten from belongings found in the rooms.
The whole situation was queer. As far as they could tell there was no murderer. From first impressions they thought that Miss Dinkley had been the killer from the noose around her neck and evidence that she had probably hung herself, but the ferry master swore he'd never touched anything in the house and would never take a body down from the ceiling and put it on a bed "all respectful-like like that, cos I ain't the kind o' man to touch a dead body and get infected wi' all its cursedness." So that was a dead end.
Even after the investigation closed three months later they never found the letter taped to the door in the library passageway. If they had, they would have read the confession of a serial killer by the name of U. N. Owen.
oOo
To whom it may concern,
I've always wanted to use that phrase to start a letter. There are several things I've always wanted to do which I have accomplished this past weekend.
Owen paused and chewed on the eraser of the pencil, thinking. Where to start? So many things done, so many things to choose from. With a nod it was decided – at the beginning, where so many good stories begin.
First, I have always wanted to sneak poison into someone's drink. That first death I really didn't care who died, and poor Frederick Jones was just unlucky enough to get the glass with the cyanide in it. In retrospect that could be a good thing. He seemed like a very annoying sort of fellow. I never got along with self-centered types.
Another pause. Owen didn't have to describe every death over the weekend. Just the ones that counted as things accomplished.
I have always wanted to kill someone. Strange, do you think? I don't think so. It's fun now that I know what it feels like. I grew up with a police officer for a dad, however, and he worked in the homicide department. Because of this I understand capital punishment, killing the guilty but not the innocent. I understand that. So when I decided it was time to fulfill that irrepressible need I found I couldn't kill just any random stranger – I needed to find someone who was guilty and had escaped the law. So began my quest.
There's another thing I've always wanted to say.
Owen grinned. This really was very enjoyable.
To spare you the details – and another! I'm talking so prettily – I'll skip ahead to having actually found my…not victims, that's a terribly ugly word. Let's say targets. Once I had found my targets, I watched them for five months. They never knew I was there. Then again, no one ever does, but that's beside the point. I learned their habits and the way they worked. Then I played to their interests in a letter signed either Ulysses N. Owen or Mrs. U. N. Owen. They all fell for it.
They came to the island and I began to tick them off the list. They figured out the 'unknown' allusion in my pseudonym fairly quickly. I probably should have made it harder, but all the same. They made it so easy! Not one of them even tried to stop me once they'd discovered I was one of them until I was ready to kill Sylvester. Then Velma at least got some sense and started taking notes on my little lessons.
Oh, yes. I'm assuming whoever finds this doesn't know. I won over her trust so easily I almost couldn't believe it.
The pen stilled over the paper. Owen stretched and rubbed his stomach thoughtfully. He stood and went to get a snack.
There. Now where was I again? Right. I thought she caught me once, when she came to tell me dinner was ready. I had to hurry to shut off my music. My heart was thudding so loudly. Thankfully she didn't recognize it – or, I assume, heard the lyrics. After she was gone I kicked myself so many times for being so obvious about it. I mean, how much more obvious could I be, listening to a song titled "D.O.A."? I was even singing the part about "You know I did it, it's over and I feel fine" out loud! After she left I had the sense to only sing the part that qualified as innocent aloud and hum the rest to myself.
For Jennifer's sake, I will say: Thank the Lord for the phrase 'love is blind'. I suppose technically it would apply as puppy love apparently is deaf.
The police will want to know how I did it. How, they'll ask, did he manage to kill nine people and convince them he was dead at the same time? The trick is…paying attention in science class.
Most people wouldn't think I did pay attention. But I listened, ohh yes I listened, when we went over tetrodotoxin. Puffer fish poison if you're a little less science-inclined. I didn't take very much; after all I still needed to be capable of movement in time to pull off the next death and really didn't think a week of paralysis would be too beneficial.
Allow me to explain. Tetrodotoxin causes paralysis of the muscles but leaves the consumer conscious during an artificial 'coma' if you will. It lowers the body temperature and slows the heart rate enough to be unnoticeable during a doctor's – or nurse's – pulse-taking test. I'm assuming it's what Juliet took to fake her death. African voodoo shamans use it sometimes. Of course, they end up buried alive…
Just a little swallow of tetrodotoxin, inject some allergens into a few key places and sprawl out on the ground. Once it wore off I was free to resume my duty and free of suspicion. I followed Velma back out to the apiary and read her little notes. Funny, I thought to myself, but if she's including herself as a suspect, why not let her be one, and plausibly so?
I had to hurry with Sylvester's death. He was reading an old war tactics book when I strangled him. Old man never saw it coming. Then I swiped Jennifer's precious Bible, tore out a few pages, and stuffed them into his mouth to line up with Velma's little theory. I got some good ideas from her notebook. She might have been a good helper if I'd let her in on it. Unfortunately I was afraid she'd do something stupid, like tell the others.
If they had checked the pages I tore out, I practically gave myself away. Genesis 2 and 4, and I even crinkled the pages around the passages reading "And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground." And "And now thou art cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth." Did none of them think to read it?
Apparently not.
Marianne was fun to kill. She was just standing there, waiting to die, and I remembered she'd pushed her boyfriend off a cliff. The rest was just common sense. After I tossed her out as far as I could, I remembered a thing from history that seemed fitting, so I said it over her, like a little prayer or something. I'm not very poetic, but I can try. "Cum fossa et furca," I said solemnly, "with drowning-pit or gallows."
Before I continue, I need to back up a little bit. There was a handwriting analysis that the others did shortly after figuring out that I was one of them. They all thought my handwriting, as Owen, was Velma's. Lucky for me. The reason I passed without suspicion is that I'm one of the true ambidextrous people in the world, and each of my hands have different writing styles. My right hand is the one I used for Owen's writing. My left is the one I used for giving a sample.
There. Now I can continue. I'm not very organized with my letter-writing; I never once made even a B in English class on it. Oh well. Not as though I need to be organized.
Owen stopped and furrowed his brow. "What else do I need to say?" he asked himself. "What else is there to say, even?" He popped his neck a couple times. "Like, maybe I should…okay."
Pickett's death was easy. I crept out and took the axe before he reached the woodshed. When he got there he looked around in surprise. I almost laughed at the old man. He bent over to look behind the woodpile and I gave him my Little Lizzie Borden impersonation. With his wife I just slipped her a little extra medicine. It was early enough on that nobody thought to check who was where in the night.
Who else was important? …of course! Jennifer. How could I forget. I knew she might be a little more resistant to the killing, so as I was waiting for her to pass out I consoled her that she could look at it as a mercy killing and that she'd see God soon enough if she really did believe. She made a funny gurgling noise and slumped over. I don't know if she was admitting she didn't really believe it and just needed an excuse to dole out punishment or if she was agreeing with me, but she died in any case and I tied her up very nicely. I think having her hug herself was a good touch, if I do say so myself.
Daphne next. I had to force some sedative into her mouth while she was asleep in the hayloft – what a stupid place to hide; that's the first place any decent hide-and-seeker would look – but then she slept like a baby all the way into the house. I think I may have accidentally woken her up once I put her in the oven, but no matter. She's dead too. I had the sense to leave her fingers poking out so they can identify her using DNA or fingerprints, whichever. I have a feeling that when they turn up criminal records for Daphne Blake they'll also see the name she uses when designing for that fancy clothing place. I'm impressed with Marianne's acting if she recognized her. If not, she must have made herself forget what Julia Harper looked like.
I keep forgetting. Whoever finds this letter isn't going to know a thing about these murderers, and definitely not as much as I, having studied them for such a long time. Marianne's boyfriend broke up with her because he was in love with Julia Harper, whom you now know was an alias of Daphne Blake's. He then was shoved off a cliff to his death.
See, this is why I've never had a girlfriend.
Lastly, Velma. Now, she was an interesting one. If you've never met someone who's just a little whacked out, then you've never met anyone interesting. She had problems, I tell you. Killing her own parents with a poisonous gas that could permanently damage the atmosphere around the house? Ohh, as soon as I heard that she used carbon monoxide I added her to my list. Nobody gets away with hurting the environment when I'm around, and that includes Velma Dinkley. I'm pretty sure I had even her convinced she was Owen up until just before she died. I'm sorry I did so, but I just had to ask. She was laughing so hysterically.
Owen stopped, closing his eyes to picture the scene still fresh in his mind. "You didn't take your medicine, did you?" he asked quietly.
Her laughter stopped suddenly, as if it had been cut off. "No." The smile in her voice was so evident it made him smile. Then she kicked the chair over.
It fell with a satisfying thud.
He realized he was still smiling. That moment, when she had finally accepted that she was in fact on his side, was so perfect. He continued with his letter.
I won't write down what it was, but it was my favorite moment of the weekend, which is saying something since I got to kill so many people. All in all, yes, I had fun. After I finish this letter, I'm going to put it in the secret passageway in the library, along with Daphne's ID card stating that she's Julia Harper. Then I'll go finish off that cyanide. We'll just see how well the police figure it out, along with their crime scene investigation crew.
Funny that Velma never figured that one out. Curly Sewing Iron crew? C.S.I. crew? Hmph. I thought it was fairly obvious. Maybe it was just me.
Sincerely signed,
The one who got away with it all
Norville C. Rogers, son of Officer Owen Rogers in the homicide department